


take my whole life too

by scientistsinistral



Series: there and back again [6]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019), Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Anniversary, Canon Compliant, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Inter-War Britain, Marriage, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Death, Parenthood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Will Schofield is the father of Tommy from Dunkirk, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scientistsinistral/pseuds/scientistsinistral
Summary: When he asks, “How many would you like?” it is with the intention to give her each and every one.“Thousands upon thousands,” she says. “A whole lifetime’s worth, and the entirety of life to fill it with.”The world changes more times than they can count, but one constant remains.(The marriage of William and Eloise Schofield, by their wedding anniversaries.)
Relationships: William Schofield & His Children, William Schofield's Wife & Her Children, William Schofield/William Schofield's Wife
Series: there and back again [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650028
Comments: 101
Kudos: 63





	1. prelude, 1912

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title, of course, from 'Can't Help Falling in Love'. I recommend the [Kina Grannis version.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOymevxe1pI)

Once they search every nook and cranny of the house that is now theirs, Will and Eloise Schofield retire to the room that will be theirs most of all.

The last dregs of sunlight flit in through the far window, dyeing the walls as red as the bricks outside and casting a warm glow over the sheets on the bed.

Will stands and drinks in the room. It is not too different than the bedroom he has slept in every day before now; the same whitewashed walls, furniture at perfect right angles to one another. _Tiny room like this and you can’t even keep it clean,_ says a ghost on the breeze. He pays no mind to it. Instead, he shrugs his morning coat off his shoulders, for the morning is long gone, and drapes it over the chair by the bed. He will not move it until tomorrow. It is something he has never done before.

Eloise perches herself on the window. “We could put a plant here,” she says. “To make sure we can keep something simple alive before we move onto something more—complex.”

“Or we could skip onto complexity right now,” Will replies.

Eloise lets out an incredulous laugh. “I think you’ve been spending too much time listening to Oliver Marleigh. Might I remind you that we have a train to catch at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?” Her shoulders sag as the sun finally drops beneath the horizon. “Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time for that once we’ve gotten away from the city.” It will be the first time she has left Reading since she was a girl. It will be the first time Will has left at all.

Will hums, and sits down in the chair. “A week away by the seaside. It’s a nice time for it, too.” He imagines walking along the seafront with his wife—his _wife_ _—_ as a breeze rustles through his hair. Going into one of the shops and picking something out to remember the holiday by, even if it is just something small. It will be something small, if he knows anything about Eloise.

Eloise hums in agreement. “Only just touching the summer, so there shouldn’t be too many people by the sea. But the weather’s warm enough that the breeze’ll be a welcome change.” She loves her city. She wouldn’t give it up for the world, but she longs for a quieter town and the sounds of waves lapping on the sand. She has only heard of such things in stories; to see it with her own two eyes will be a pleasure indeed. And to share it with her husband, to hold his hand as they pass along a road together, will make it all the more joyous.

It is an incredible thing, that they have made it here. That they are married, not just betrothed or courting. It has been almost six years since they had their first conversation, and though it does not seem so long, the number of times they might have wandered down different paths, gotten so lost that making it to where they stand now would be an impossibility, is not small enough to be ignored.

But they have made it here, and that is not something to be ignored, either. They have made it here, and it is something Will does not take for granted as he lays Eloise down upon their bed, once she has draped her dress over the chair with his jacket and ceremoniously deposited her underskirts on the floor in a puddle.

He takes her cheek in his hand as she stares up at him, and the words slip between his lips before he has a second to think. “My goodness, you’re _beautiful_.”

Eloise’s face breaks out into a smile. “That’s the first time, you know.”

“Oh?”

“That’s the first time you’ve said that to me.”

A smile ghosts over Will’s face. “So it is.”

Eloise ponders for a moment, trying to remember the rise and fall of every syllable before the sound is lost from her memory, when she realises with a start she can just ask him to say it again.

She does, and he answers. It is no more than a whisper; these words are hers and hers alone. Will does not want to say them to anyone else. He’s not sure he would be able to.

He kisses her, softer and quieter than he did in the church. He takes his time with it, savours it, the way he can still taste the sugar on her lips, even though the cake was hours ago.

When he pulls away, and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, tracing the line of her collarbone with his thumb. It is usually tucked up under high-necked blouses and dresses, and he realises that there is still so much he does not know about Eloise.

Like the way she is so bold as to decide she has not had enough. She lifts and kisses again, slow and tender, and it roots them both to the ground.

Their first rose peeks out from this solid foundation, beautiful and lonely. Eloise hopes that, in time, they will grow an entire garden in the fresh soil.

Despite her protestations, she wouldn’t mind laying seed with the soil tonight, and she is about to suggest it when Will rolls over onto his back beside her.

“You’re right,” he says, tucking a hand behind his head and sinking into the soft mattress. “I’m worn out. All of that can wait until tomorrow.”

“Are you still in your suit?” says Eloise.

“Sans the morning jacket, yes.”

“You should probably change out of that.”

“I should.”

“Are you going to?”

“Probably not.”

Eloise laughs. She looks up, just able to make out the curves of the ceiling light in the darkness. “So this is it,” she says. “Our first night.”

It is as if the entire world rushes through the open window and comes to rest in their bedroom. Tears prick Will’s eyes, and he does not stop them rolling down his cheeks.

“Hmm,” he says, because he can’t manage any more than that.

“I hope it’s the first of many,” says Eloise.

Will turns to look at her. Her eyes are shut, the edges of her lips pulled up into a quiet smile. When he asks, “How many would you like?” it is with the intention to give her each and every one.

Eloise smiles a little wider. “Thousands upon thousands,” she says. “A whole lifetime’s worth, and the entirety of life to fill it with.”

Will hums in agreement. He puts his arm around her and pulls her in close, until their faces are barely two inches from one another. It is not the closest they have ever been, but it is nothing they have ever known before, and they both revel in it.

“And I want them all with you,” says Eloise. “Every day. Every month. Every year.”

"Every Christmas and birthday and wedding anniversary,” Will adds, pulling her in a little closer to his chest.

“Goodness, anniversaries,” says Eloise. “I can still remember the party the Rutherfords on Battle Street had on their sixtieth. Their entire front court was covered in decorations.”

Will laughs. “Well, if we make it to sixty years, you can have one too.”

Eloise considers it for a moment. The thought of it fills her up with such longing, but she knows she cannot run away with it. Sixty years is a long time, and she has no clue what the first year holds, let alone more than that.

She smiles, because it is all she can do. “Let’s try and make it to one, shall we?”

Will sighs in response as he falls asleep, the weight of the day finally catching up with him, and Eloise soon follows suit. They keep each other safe throughout the night, their first step on the long, winding road, over land and over sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As one door closes, another opens. Apparently, LadyCharity and I just can't seem to let this series go. I hope you enjoyed, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!
> 
> Sidenote, I'd like to share the gem of my bullet point notes for this chapter as I was writing, which is a single point just going, _'they're so in love'_. It's true. It's very true.


	2. shall I write it in a letter?; 1913

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from and recommended listening: [_Bloom_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8inJtTG_DuU) by The Paper Kites.

The first creeps up on them.

It seemed like longer, whilst they were in the midst of it. The days passed, one by one, the months changing so slowly that Will wondered if they would ever make it to a year of marriage. Each moment seemed to bring a new joy or trouble with it, and they have put out more than their fair share of sparks before they became fires.

But they have turned once around the sun, and the thought of it rises within him like a firework until he is afraid he might bring down the house himself.

They had agreed not to do anything special for their anniversary. No fancy restaurants, nothing ornate. Supper by candlelight in the kitchen, that’s all—and even that doesn’t quite come to pass.

It’s not that Will isn’t a romantic, but as Eloise strikes a match and lights two tall dinner candles, something doesn’t feel quite right.

“Blow them out,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Blow out the candles and light the room again.”

She does, and grumbles to herself as she does so. “I spend _four hours_ trying to find candles today, and you have me snuff them out before we’ve even begun,” she says, blowing out one candle and using the other to relight the gas lamp rather than getting the wax taper from the sideboard. “Why?” she asks, as the lamp ignites with a pop, casting a dim light over the kitchen.

Will shrugs, because in truth, he cannot quite put his finger on it. It takes him a few moments to cobble the words together as Eloise stands by the table, one hand still on the matchbox as if she is expecting him to change his mind.

“It didn’t seem right. We’re a pair for the musk and dim lights of your father’s pub, not this. It feels—”

He breaks off, because he cannot find the words to finish the sentence. He looks up at Eloise as if she will fare any better.

“No, I see what you mean,” she says. “Like we’re pretending to be something we’re not. And that’s not something we’ve ever done.”

Will Schofield loves his wife. He’s sure he doesn’t say that enough.

The last wisps of smoke rise from the candle as Eloise sits back down. “As much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree. I want to be able to see you—not that this is much better than the candles, because that gas mantle’s on its last legs and you really do need to fix it—but I spent two hours cooking this curry and I want to make sure I did it right.”

Will laughs and takes a mouthful. It’s delicious; the flavours melding together in ways he did not think possible, and the heat is enough to make him feel alive but not enough to burn. Eloise has done better than he ever could have imagined, and he tells her as much.

She smiles. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were just saying that to flatter me.”

“Would I lie to you?”

She eats herself, and though she tries to hide it, her face screws up. “No, but your taste buds are clearly very different from mine, in that case. I think I put far too much spice into this.” She sticks her tongue out, scouring it with her front teeth as if that will make things any better.

Will stands up immediately and gets her a glass of water. “If you ask me, spirits burn worse than this does.” he says.

“That’s because you’re a cider man, Will, and because you’ve never had a drink that’s mixed so it actually tastes _nice_. If we had any liquor in the house right now, I could get you drunk on one glass,” she says, sipping the water like she wishes it is whiskey.

They both laugh and finish their dinner. Eloise gets about halfway through hers before she can stand the heat no longer, and she pushes it away. But it seems an awful waste, so Will eats the rest of her plate as well.

Eloise’s eyes are alight with amusement and affection in equal measure as she leans on her hand and watches him. “You’re ridiculous,” she says, though there is no weight to it.

“And yet you married me anyway,” he replies. “And it’s been a year, so I think it’s a _little_ late to be backing out of the arrangement.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. Now, if you’re quite finished, and I think you are,” she adds, surveying the two plates he has practically picked clean, “I have something for you.”

He protests, reminding her of the agreement they’d had not to make a fuss of it. Eloise waves him off as she stands and makes her way to the cabinet. “I stand by that agreement,” she says. “But there’s also the weight of tradition—”

“You mean our mothers—”

“ _Tradition_ bearing down on us both, and an opportunity presented itself,” she says, retrieving something from behind the bag of flour she bought yesterday. “Besides, I don’t think for a single second that you haven’t done the same, and I know I’m right on that one.”

Will does not protest, because she is. In turn, he takes himself to the sitting room and searches down the side of the armchair until his hand finds the paper he stashed there earlier. He hadn’t known where else to hide it, anywhere else Eloise would not have found it as she cleaned the house from top to bottom.

The envelope seems flimsy in his hand, the paper too thin, too easy to tear. He can only hope that what is inside carries greater strength.

He returns to the kitchen, where Eloise has stacked the dishes into the sink, though she has made no start on washing them. There is something beside her on the windowsill.

She picks it up and crosses back to the table when she sees him come in, and he joins her. He sees, once he is close enough, that the object in her hands is an envelope. It is smaller than the one he holds in his that bears her name.

“Same idea, I think,” he says, sliding it across to her.

“I’m not so sure about that,” says Eloise, accepting it and handing hers to him in turn. When it is close enough, he notices the POST OFFICE TELEGRAM across the top, with his full name and their address pencilled underneath in her hand. He smiles at her.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” he says, remembering the stand-off they’d had on Broad Street when they were first talking about the possibility of being married. He thumbs over the words; Eloise must have written out so many other names and addresses in her time as a telegrapher, but there is something incomparable in seeing her write his and theirs.

“Open it,” she says.

“If you open that,” he says, gesturing at the envelope in her hands.

Eloise nods and tears open the envelope in one clean, swift motion. It takes Will two to do the same, but he gets there eventually, and pulls out the telegram inside.

His name, their address, and WOULD STILL TRADE MACHINE TO MARRY YOU, printed in black on white paper. He laughs at the sight, and something within him lifts. He had not been aware of the pebble weight sitting in his chest until it was gone, but he recognises it now: they have been married for a full year and he is still afraid he took something from her in doing so. Will does not want to imagine a world where Eloise is not his wife, but he would do so a thousand times over if she was happier that way. “Thank you,” he says, finally.

She does not look up from where she is scanning the contents of the letter he gave her. Will finds himself holding his breath as he waits; he knows the words he has written there speak no falsehoods, that he has laced as much love into the words as he can, tried to accurately depict all he feels for Eloise regardless of whether or not he’d succeeded, and yet he is not sure of himself.

Eloise finishes reading and smiles as she looks up. “It’s beautiful, Will,” she says. “Thank you.”

But the smile doesn’t light up her eyes the way he has seen it do before, and her thank you does not carry the same warm, tender tone that always makes him want to lift her in the air and kiss her in joy. It is then that Will knows that he has given everything he has, and it is not enough. She has given him exactly what he needed, and he has failed to do the same.

He’s not sure what to do after that. The backs of his ears burn, and even though he knows the sting of the cane all too well, this has always been worse.

Eloise darts around the kitchen table and pulls him to his feet before his mind has a chance to spin away. “Will, it _is_ beautiful,” she says, taking his hands. “It was a surprise, I’ll admit—it wasn’t something I expected you’d do. _”_

It isn’t something Will had expected he’d do, either. He has known for years that Eloise, when given the choice of words or chairs, chose the latter, but he had dared to think just for a moment that words might have been different coming from him.

“There’s always next year to do better,” he whispers.

“Oh, Will,” she says. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

He does not quite believe it, but he does not know what else to say.

He does not have to. It is there and then that the gas mantle gives out, and darkness falls over the room.

Eloise yelps. A few moments pass before the gas supply chains rattle together above them, Eloise fumbling around in the dark, but she is too short to properly grasp them when not standing on a chair. Will reaches up in turn and pulls on the right chain until he can no longer hear the lamp hissing.

“I _told_ you it was going to break,” says Eloise from beside him, when she stills.

“Oh, don’t start,” he says, expecting a reminder that she’s been telling him for two months now to _fix the bloody light before it burns out completely, Will,_ but it does not come. Instead, Eloise laughs.

“There you are,” she says. “There’s the man I know and love. The one I married. That’ll always be more than enough.”

Will wraps an arm around her waist. “I’ll remind you of that next time you complain because our fireplace won’t get going.”

He can barely see her scowl at him. Harder to light than a failed gas lamp, she says, casting a pointed eye at _their_ broken one, before asserting that she _can_ do it, and she’ll prove it in the sitting room this instant if he likes. She feels herself out of the room before he can say anything either way, but Will does not follow immediately.

He is still in awe of her; of the home she keeps running at full speed despite all he manages to do to derail it, and of the way she exists outside of it too; he remembers the way she baked those biscuits as a housewarming present when the Ashdowns moved in down the road.

“Love!” Eloise calls from the next room. “The fire is on, and you’re missing it!”

And she is so incredibly full of life, enough that she makes him feel it, too. He is not used to being so full, but she makes him want to, and he wonders, not for the first time, how he ever got so lucky.

Will goes to join Eloise by the fire, safe in the knowledge that it will not be the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to you all who have come back for this chapter! I'm very well aware that this is _incredibly_ niche as far as '1917' fics go, and it means the world to me that it's being read.
> 
> Eagle-eyed readers might notice that this fic is now part 6 of the 'there and back again' series, and that the former part 6, 'our dying soldier lives' has vanished into the ether. This is because 1) I've not been particularly happy with how that fic ended for a while now, and 2) it was written pre the emotional journey seen in 'here be dragons' and potentially as the series will go on. I am planning on rewriting it at some point in the future. Stay tuned!
> 
> Thanks go again to Ealasaid, Pavuvu, WafflesRisa and LadyCharity for the enthusiasm, support and good times. If you have not read the 'between the crosses' series by Ealasaid and Pavuvu, or the marvellous 'Pick a man. Bring your kit.' by WafflesRisa, I highly recommend them, and of course, the rest of the 'there and back again' series by LadyCharity. 'here be dragons' just wrapped up, and I am a wreck, and I hope I will come half as close to nailing William Schofield as they have. Time will tell!


	3. cotton dreams; 1914

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from, and recommended listening: [_Cotton Dreams_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arJUu-Qgk1c) by Elm Lake.  
> (Although I'd be lying if I didn't say a great deal of this was written to 'Dear Theodosia' from the musical Hamilton!)

Eloise feels like a child again.

Mother flits around the bedroom; taking a duster to the windowsill and adjusting the curtains to let in more light, muttering that she didn’t raise her daughters to keep their houses in such sorry states.

Eloise, for the fiftieth time since Mother got there only _four hours ago,_ points out that she’s barely had any time to sleep, let alone think about cleaning the house.

This is on account of her five-day-old daughter currently mewling in her arms.

Edith stretches wildly, wriggles about so much that Eloise is afraid she might tumble out of her arms. She could only fall mere inches onto the sheets, but Eloise is afraid of it happening anyway.

According to Mother, this is normal; that the instinct to keep her baby safe from the world and never let them go is one Eloise will never lose.

She has spent her entire life trying to wriggle away from Mother’s constant drive to have her married and starting a family, dodging clever schemes and ignoring subtle comments about kind gentlemen who will be able to provide for her and keep her comfortable all her life.

But as she sits and holds her own daughter, Eloise thinks she is the closest she has ever been to understanding her mother.

“Supper is on the stove; all William needs to do is to heat it up and you can both eat,” says Mother, finally settling down in the chair pulled up close to the bed. “I still cannot believe your husband would leave you alone when you’re so fragile like this.”

“I’m not going to break, Mother,” Eloise replies. “Will has to work; even with the weekend, he’s taken three days off already and there’s rent to be paid. Not all of us are so fortunate as to live in a home owned outright, and to have a man whose workplace is only downstairs.”

Mother scowls but does not protest; as much as Eloise has heard her complain about living over the rowdiness that is the Lady of the Lake, they both know her circumstances are not shared by most women of their class.

Instead, she holds her arms out for her granddaughter, who is still fussing about. Eloise hands Edith over in the hopes that Mother will fare any better. Her arms fall back onto the sheets, seemingly emptier. Without Edith’s weight bearing down on them, there is something missing. Eloise nearly didn’t put her down the first night, and only did at Will’s insistence that doing so would put their daughter at risk.

Mother has no more luck with settling Edith than Eloise did, though it is not for lack of trying. She tries everything she knows: rocks her side to side and up and down, sings no less than four lullabies, stands up and paces around the room a few times in case Edith is merely tired of staying in the same spot for such a long time, and even resorts, to Eloise’s great amusement, to pulling a silly face that Eloise does not remember but feels in her soul, as if she is a newborn again rather than a new mother of twenty-two.

But even Mother is forced to concede, and she passes Edith back to Eloise. Perhaps she is hungry, they think, so they let her feed, and she takes to Eloise’s breast with gusto, just like she did an hour ago, and every hour before that stretching back to the moment she was born. This is also normal, Mother says, and that it will slow down in the coming days.

Edith finishes feeding, and Eloise allows her to burp. She settles for a little while, allowing her mother some peace.

Eloise still cannot quite believe it. That she has carried Edith all these months, and that her daughter— _her daughter—_ lies in her arms now, blinking at the world and drinking it all in as greedily as she takes her mother’s milk, as she wants to take in every facet of it with every waking moment. It makes Eloise laugh, and she wonders, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how on Earth she has made it here. There is a child in her arms and rings in the drawer that will go back onto her finger once the swelling has subsided, and Eloise has a place of her own, no matter how many times she has to fix parts of it, or to fiddle with matches until a fire finally catches. She has a home and family of her own, and Eloise does not take that lightly.

But then Edith starts squirming again, and Eloise sighs as she falls back against the pillows.

“Some quiet here would be appreciated, darling,” she says.

Edith does not comply. She may have come exactly on time and dealt her mother a great mercy of a time in doing it, but she is certainly not making life easy right now. Eloise is not sure how much more of this she can take.

“Where is that husband of yours?” Mother asks, taking the words right out of Eloise’s mouth. If she has missed him as she waited for him to come home to her after work every day, she yearns for him now. She wants him, wants to rest her head against the crook of his shoulder as she has done for hours on end over the past few days, and countless times in the months before that.

“I don’t know, Mother,” she says instead. She has no idea what time it is; the only clock in the house is above the fireplace, and with the long days that signify the coming of summer, Eloise cannot rely on sundown to indicate Will might be returning soon. For now, all she can do is wait, and although she is practiced in waiting for her husband by now, the longing never seems to fade.

A mercy comes. Downstairs, a door opens, followed by an, “I’m home, love!”

Though Eloise wants nothing more than to tell Will to get up here this instant, she takes a breath, sits up a little and calls back, “Scullery first, Will!” Her voice seems weaker than it usually is; she is still recovering from having Edith, and for a moment she worries he has not heard her.

She should not have worried. “Going now!” comes the reply, and she relaxes again as her mother’s eyes flick from the door to the bedroom, then back to Eloise, quizzical.

“Sawdust is irritating when it’s in your bed, but I draw the line at him getting it on our daughter,” Eloise replies.

Mother parses the statement for a moment, before leaning back in her chair. “I _suppose_ sawdust is better than that constant musk your father brings home. But I do hope that husband of yours makes you the happiest woman in the world to make up for the sorry state of this place,” she says, sweeping her hands about the room.

She smiles. “He does, Ma. He really does.”

“Then I suppose that’s all I can ask for,” Mother replies. “Careful, I think she’s fussing again.”

Eloise looks down and notices that Edith is doing just that. One hand is balled into a fist, the other reaches and grabs onto a few strands of Eloise’s hair and pulls. Eloise yelps a little and manages, with some difficulty, to transfer that grip from her hair to her finger just as there’s a patter on the stairs, the creak of the top board that Will still hasn’t fixed even though it’d take him less than an hour. “Alright, darling. Let’s see if Papa can figure out what you want, shall we?”

The bedroom door swings open, and Will steps in. It is as if he brings the entire world with him, sweeping life and fresh air into the room she has been confined in for the last five days, on orders of both her mother and her mother-in-law.

“Hello,” Will says. There is a brown paper parcel in his hand that he sets on the dresser, before crossing the room and pressing a kiss to her temple. “How are you feeling?”

“Still tired,” she says. “But having Mother here helped a little.”

Will smiles at her mother and thanks her for the washing hung up on lines to dry in the garden and the pot of soup on the stove. Mother doesn’t say anything, but she smiles to herself, quietly pleased. It wasn’t as if she was going to leave her daughter alone whilst she’d barely shaken off the throes of childbirth, she says, and Will thanks her for that, too.

“If I could have stayed at home, I would have,” he says. “I missed you.”

“You too,” she says, and smiles despite herself. Will looks at her, slightly amused; as much as she misses him constantly as she waits, it is not something she says very often. She does not want his head to get too big, after all. “Or rather, I just missed not having you around to pass Edith to,” she adds, as their daughter starts to shift about again.

Will kneels beside the bed and holds out his arms for Edith, taking her with the same gentleness he always does. “And how are you, young madam?” he says, adjusting her in his hands so that her head rests in the crook of his elbow.

Edith stills immediately. She stares at her father for a few seconds, before turning her head and burying her face into his shoulder.

Eloise lets out an incredulous laugh. “Really?”

Will turns his head to her and smiles. “Hmm?”

“Your daughter has been fussing all day. We fed her, changed her, tried rocking her, lullabies, and in the end—”

“She just missed her Papa,” he finishes, looking down at Edith. She is fast asleep in his arms, the same way he looked upon her when she was born and every time he held her after that. His eyes barely blink, as if they don’t want to lose a single moment. “I missed you too, sweetheart.”

He looks up for a second. “Oh, I have something for you.” He stands and crosses back to the dresser, just managing to pick up the parcel with his thumb and forefinger before bringing it back to her. He barely makes it before the paper slips from his fingers and lands in Eloise’s lap, then sits on the edge of the bed, rocking Edith slightly.

“What’s this?” she says, picking up the parcel. The paper rustles as she turns it over in her hands, but the contents seem soft.

Will smiles amusedly. “It’s only been two years. And everyone said you were the romantic one.”

It takes her a few moments to understand the weight of what he is saying, the subtle rib and the date she has all but forgotten.

She does not dignify him with a reply. Instead, she looks down to Edith, then back at Will like that ought to explain everything, and he smiles. Then she tells him to sit closer in, because Edith is hanging over the side of the bed and Eloise is still afraid of her falling.

“Besides,” she adds. “I thought we’ve established you don’t need to _buy_ my love, Will. You have it anyway.”

Will kisses her forehead for that. “To be fair, it’s not exactly for you. Open it.”

She does, unfolding it carefully, trying not to rip it. She might be able to save it, to use it again when she’s out of brown paper herself.

But she gets it open, and she smiles when she does. Five cotton nappies fall out onto the sheets, safety pins stuck through them. The stitching is better than the one Edith has on at the moment, the edges neater than the one her grandmother made for her.

Will looks up hesitantly at Mother. He stammers out a response of not wanting to insult her good work, but of the fact that Edith seems to be flying through the nappies quicker than they can change her, and he just thought that he’d go and get more on account of Eloise not being able to sew them herself.

“Really,” he adds. “Are little ones supposed to soil their underclothes this much?”

Mother laughs a little. “Oh, you have no idea. But yes. Be prepared to wash a dozen every week, because you will need to.”

Something flashes over Will’s face, and Eloise is sure it passes over her own, too; the revelation that Edith is theirs to raise at least until she is an adult, come hell or high water. They both ignore that revelation for a few moments more, though Will does lift Edith to his nose to check she doesn’t need one of those nappies right now, and kisses her on the forehead when she doesn’t.

Mother takes that as her cue to leave. Will sees her out, though he deliberates for a moment as to whether to take Edith with him or to hand her back to Eloise, fearing that the latter will wake her up again. Eloise, in turn, tells him to take her; there is a wrench in her gut at the thought of letting her child out of her sight, but Edith has not left their bedroom since she was born, and Eloise thinks it is time for her to see more of the house. Besides, her father has her, and she trusts him to keep Edith safe like the beat of her own heart.

The wait, as expected, is agonising, Eloise’s mind swimming with possibilities—improbable ones, but possibilities nonetheless—but it soon over. Will returns a few minutes later, and Edith is safe in his hands.

“Thank you for this,” she says, running her hands over the nappies again. “Much appreciated.”

Will lets out a small laugh. “I’ll let you in on a secret.”

“Hmm?”

“I forgot it was our anniversary too. I didn’t actually buy these.”

Eloise laughs incredulously. “What?”

Will smiles. “They’re from Winifred. She also apparently has a knitted lace blanket to be given as soon as she finishes it. Just didn’t want to tell your mother that her sewing is worse than my sister’s.”

Eloise stares at him for a moment, before laughing until she is out of breath. She pats the sheets beside her, and Will slips in, nestling Edith between them. “Oh, that’s gold, that is.”

“Well, they’re both still better than you.”

“Watch yourself,” she replies, and cuffs him lightly on the shoulder. But she cannot hold any pretence of annoyance or irritation. She does not want to be, not when she has her husband and daughter huddled close to her and the world feels more at peace than it has in a long time.

She lays her head on Will’s shoulder, looking down at Edith, who has put Will’s thumb in her mouth and seems to have no intention of letting it go. It is everything, _everything_ —more than anything Eloise has ever known, and she holds it gently with both hands. “Look at her, Will. She’s ours. Look at what we made.”

He hums in agreement, closing his eyes. “I wonder what joys we’ll have next year.” Eloise lets herself dream, just for a moment. Next year, Edith will be one; perhaps old enough to toddle around the house on tiny legs, to run through the soft meadows her parents both enjoyed when they were children. She will turn one just as the long summer comes around again, months of long sunlit days stretching out before her to enjoy.

And she and Will will still be with one another. Somehow, Eloise loves him twice as much as she did last year. Her heart swelled in her chest as they made it to where they sit now, cocooned by soft white sheets, with their entire lives still to live and a little one to raise.

Will brings her supper without prompting, and she feeds Edith in turn, a fine-tuned rhythm set by the years that have passed, before they nestle together again. They stay like that until the sun begins to set, staining the sky a burning orange that fades to a dark indigo as night falls.

But Eloise is not afraid of it. The sun will rise again in the morning, and she will still be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, two updates in a relatively short span of time. Why? Because I'm a sentimental soul who celebrates the arbitrary birthdays I give my characters, and today (12th May) is Eloise's, so I thought I'd give her some page time with the purest of happinesses to match it.
> 
> Thank you again for reading! Feedback always appreciated, and I hope you have a wonderful day.


	4. time is the enemy; 1915

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [_1917_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmIPZCZc19Q) from the incredible score by Thomas Newman.
> 
> Chapter title is, of course, the 1917 tagline.

Will Schofield is not in the business of misplacing things.

He knows exactly where everything is in his house; he knows his books by their exact positions on the shelf in the sitting room, and opens the right drawers to find his clothes in the morning on the first try, whilst Eloise rummages around to try and find a suitable blouse and skirt, because she has mixed them all up together. 

He makes the bed as soon as he wakes, tucking the sheet corners beneath the mattress like he is in a hospital rather than his own home, and there is no chance of losing something under them.

So he surprises himself when he undoes the careful work of the morning when he comes home from work one Thursday, upturning the sheets to check if the wristwatch he bought mere weeks ago is there, because it is not on the table by the bed where he could have sworn he put it down, nor is it in any of the kitchen cupboards, or the down the back of the armchair, or in any of the drawers of Eloise’s dresser—though he’s not sure why it would be there in the first place—and Will is running out of spots it could have tucked itself away.

He cannot have lost it already. Two pounds ten is more than an entire week’s wages; they did not starve so he could buy it, but knows that it would be cruel to his family to take that money from them twice. It is even crueler when he remembers what the watch was bought for.

The storms of war are right on top of them now. Men that Will sat beside in the schoolhouses are making their way across the seas, farther than any of them have ever been before. It will not be long before he joins them, too. 

He has talked himself in and out of it half a dozen times. In when he sees Lord Kitchener pointing straight at him. Out when he recognises another name on the casualty list in the newspaper. In again when the same newspaper reports that the Germans have shelled Scarborough, have sunk the Lusitania, and more men join to make sure nothing else like that happens. Out again when he hears that one of the victims was a second cousin on his mother’s side. In when a young woman stops him in the street on his way to work and tucks a white feather into his coat. Out when he fights his way back home, rattled, and his young woman struggles to get a spoonful of mashed carrots into Edith’s mouth, and Will gets it in on the first try, and he cannot imagine not being there to ease the burden on Eloise’s back.

In when he leaves the bedroom window open one night and the ghost rushes back in on the wind. _Four older sisters, three of them dead before they were full grown,_ it says, _and all with more bleeding guts than_ you _, William. All of them fought to the last. Where is your fire?_

Out when he visits the eldest of them, the only sister he has left, the only one he still clearly remembers, and she tells him her house is emptier now that her husband has left for France. That her daughters keep asking where he is because they do not understand he is gone. She reminds him how a man can be torn apart by war, even if his body remains intact, and suddenly, William is seven again, the shouts almost loud enough to fill up a house that was always too empty.

In when the ghost won’t stop whispering, even when he shuts the windows. The sound is always half a step behind him, drilling, no matter how much he tries to run from it. It only quiets when he buys a wristwatch from an advertisement in the newspaper, and Will is in again.

But not if he can’t find the bloody watch.

He finally concludes that it is not anywhere on the sheets, and he makes the bed again until there is no evidence it was ever disrupted. He sighs to himself. Perhaps Edith has taken it; she has gotten curious lately, and on more than one occasion, Will has had to stop her before she climbed on top of a stool to reach high drawers lest she lose her balance and fall.

She is sitting in her crib when he finds her. She peers up at her father above the wooden rails, and then through the bars as he sits down so that they are eye to eye. “Hello, Edith,” he says. “You don’t happen to know where my watch is, do you?”

Edith blinks slowly at him, and Will smiles ruefully. He does not expect her to understand—she can mimic a few basic words, now, and when Eloise asks her where her father is, she looks at Will and points, but even a simple query about his watch is far beyond her and will be for a good while. The thought that he will not be there when she finally learns to flits through his mind before he can stop it. It chills him to the bone, and it nearly casts him out again.

Then she smiles. All of her incisors have cut through, stark white and gleaming; she cried for hours on end when she was teething, her only solace a cold flannel Eloise put in her mouth, but she shows them off proudly now. It is the mark of growing up. Will’s daughter is growing up, and he does not want her to be lost before she has a chance to grow all the way. He wants more for her than his sisters had. 

In.

She reaches for him through a gap between the bars. He takes her tiny hand in his, and her fingers close around his thumb. It makes Will want to take her in his arms and never let her go, but he does not. He knows he will never be able to leave her if he does, so he merely sits before her and lets her hold onto his hand for a little while longer.

“Forgive me,” he says, low enough that he can almost convince himself she can’t hear him, even though it is just the two of them in the nursery. “Forgive me, Edith.”

Edith grabs onto his thumb a little tighter when he says it, as if that is enough to keep him where he is, and Will’s heart almost bursts. For a moment, he thinks she is about to cry. 

She does not. She lets his finger go, and she stares at him in such a manner he knows all too well. Edith may have inherited Will’s pale eyes, but she stares like her mother, solid and unyielding, as if to say _Do what you have to._ He isn’t sure if it is a blessing or a curse. He wonders if she knows she has just sent him across the sea in doing so. He hopes she never does. 

He stands up, eventually, once it is blindingly clear that Edith does not have his watch and he must keep on searching. It has to be somewhere in the house; he remembers returning home with it three nights ago and setting it on the nightstand, though perhaps he is mistaken.

In any case, Will finally concedes that he cannot find the watch on his own, and takes himself to the kitchen where Eloise has a watery pot of soup simmering on the stove. “Evening, love.”

“Good evening,” she echoes, not looking up. “Was work all right?”

Will hums. They’re managing at the workshop; some of the younger, unmarried boys have already enlisted, but they have enough hands to keep the place open and the orders shipping out on time, but he is not so naive as to believe that will not all change too. Instead, Will rambles on about the kitchen table he is building, and how he needs to change the belt on his sander because it’s wearing thin, and the fact that he’s definitely getting on in years because the splinters hurt more than they used to, even though he thinks he’s getting about the same number. Eloise pauses from stirring the soup at the last one and kisses the tips of his fingers as if that will make things any better.

(It does.)

But he runs out of conversation topics before long, and he finally asks the question he had come to her for in the first place.

“Have you seen a silver watch with a black leather strap?”

He expects her to shake her head, to ask him where she last saw it and tell him she’ll help him look for it after supper when he says he doesn’t remember, but she does none of that. Instead, she leans down to the cupboards under the stove and retrieves something, yet again, from behind the flour.

“I should just start checking there at random intervals,” he says. “You only have one hiding spot.”

“And if I didn’t know better, I’d say your hiding spots were so good you’d forgotten where they even were, which sort of defeats the point,” Eloise fires back. “But I do know better, and I know you’re not at fault for this one.”

She stands up again, and there is something clenched in her hand.

“I would have given this to you earlier, but I wanted to hold out until today,” she says, and Will does not understand until she presents his watch to him on her open palm, the silver polished and gleaming, the glass clear and unmarred.

“Oh,” he says, when he remembers what day it is. He has forgotten again.

Will takes the watch from her hand. For a moment he still does not understand why she has simply hidden it behind the flour when it looks much the same as it did when he bought it, until he runs his thumb over the inside of the leather strap and feels an indentation near the watch face.

It is hard to see, set in black, and he has to hold it up close and squint a little to make out the inscription. When he finally deciphers the two letters–W.S., his own initials—it is as if a gale blows through the kitchen in an instant even though the windows are bolted shut, and it takes everything he has to keep himself rooted to the ground. Even then it's not enough.

“Will?” Eloise says, her voice trembling a little, tears beginning to form at the corners of her wide, dark eyes. He stares at her for a moment, just until he returns to himself. He knows he is scaring her. He hates that he does.

He takes her hand. “It’s beautiful, Eloise,” he says. “Thank you.”

It is the least convincing thing he has ever said to her. They both know it. Will is not versed in falsehood, has made a point of telling the truth where he can, and so it should not surprise him when he cannot lie to his wife. It is the first time he wishes he could.

Eloise blinks the forming tears out of her eyes, and turns back to the stove. Will steps back so that he cannot see her face—she is trying to be strong, and though he wants nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and explain everything, he does not. He does not have the words for it, and he doesn’t think he could force himself to say them even if he had. He knows what she would say after. He knows he would not be able to leave her if she did.

Will runs his finger over the indented letters on the band again. If he turns them at the just the right angle, they look exactly like the letters engraved on the pocket watch his mother placed into a grave when he was sixteen. W.S. William Schofield. William, always William.

Are you proud of me now? he asks the ghost. Are you proud of your son who finally decided to fight?

The wind howls, but the ghost does not speak again. It does not matter. Will knows the answer anyway.

Eloise shivers and tells him to watch the stove for a moment whilst she double checks the window bolts; of course, they hold firm. “It’s the end of May,” she says, “the windows are shut, and there’s a fire burning. Why is it so cold in here?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and does not believe it. He puts his arm around Eloise’s waist when she returns to the stove and holds her close, resting his chin on top of her head, letting her back press into his chest as they have done so many times before. “I love you,” he says, because it is the one thing he can say that will always be true.

Eloise sighs as she continues to stir the pot. “You too,” she says. 

It is not enough, and it is everything.

And it is soon over, as Eloise turns off the gas and goes to fetch Edith from the nursery. There is a tear-track on her left cheek as she leaves, and it leaves something heavy in Will’s throat. 

When she returns, the track is gone. Eloise stands, straight-backed, shoulders squared, head held high, Edith pressed close to her chest. “Are you hungry, darling?” she asks, and Edith buries her face in Eloise’s shoulder and makes the slightest of nods.

Eloise hums. “Good. I have some nice soup and mashed potatoes for you.” She looks up at Will. “Let’s have supper, shall we?”

She leads them all to the kitchen table, where Will watches Edith whilst Eloise deposits a hearty meal before them all, then she leads them all in saying grace. It is as if this were any other day, that they will have another one like it tomorrow, and it is exactly what Will needs at that moment.

He does not know how much of this he has left. He does not know if he will still be here this time next year, next month, the next week. But he must believe that he will have tomorrow, or he will not make it through today.

Will slips the watch onto his wrist, tightening it to the third hole. It sits awkwardly against his skin, the leather still stiff and unyielding, like a manacle. He almost wants to throw it off, only being able to tell the time by the setting sun, but he cannot. He must get used to it, so he keeps it there as he eats, watching the second hand tick only one way around the dial, fierce and incessant, and feeling the indents pressed against his pulse, reminding him exactly who he has been and who he has yet to be.

William. Schofield. Will.

Somehow, he is all three, buffeted between them, hoping he will eventually bank at one shore and stay there. He knows he will be Schofield soon, maybe for as long as it takes for the fighting to end. He is no stranger to it; he has been Schofield to most people he calls friends for a decade, and he has not forgotten he was Schofield to Eloise for five years. But he is not to her now.

When Eloise finishes dinner, she lays a gentle hand on his shoulder and calls him by the name he gave her when they were eighteen, a name he had not afforded many at the time.

He will soon be Schofield again. It is coming for him, just as sure as the river runs to the open sea, as sure as one full rotation of the second hand on his watch means another minute has passed, never to return again. But he is not Schofield just yet.

In this moment, right here in his home, he is Will, just Will, and that is enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, we're back! It's been a little while because the author has been completing/procrastinating her uni assignments and this is her treat for finally turning three of them in. This is coupled with the fact that she _still_ celebrates the arbitrary birthdays she gives her characters, and today (22nd May) is little Edith's. I only wish I could have given her more joy with this chapter.
> 
> Thank yous for this chapter: a) as always, to the lovely humans of the Longfic Lads (LadyCharity, WafflesRisa, Pavuvu & Ealasaid) who aside from being great company, also hype me up even when I make questionable decisions like writing a 3k essay in 21 hours, b) to the wonderful fandomsruinedmylife and insuchawonderfulway (yes, their usernames combine, they're that wonderful), who are the best best-friends a girl could ask for and who read these fics despite neither of them actually having seen '1917' (though I hope they will eventually!) Bless you two, honestly.
> 
> Historical notes:
> 
> I am a sucker for watches, both in general (the watch in my icon is the one I now rarely take off and was totally bought as a result of this fic series, haha) and the watches in '1917'. I link this all the time, but [here is a fantastic analysis of wristwatches and their usage in the film](https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/english/2020/02/05/time-is-the-enemy/) and [here is a great overview of the development of men's wristwatches in general, which was largely spurred by the Great War. ](https://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/trenchwatches.php)


	5. come back to us; 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title and recommended listening: the lovely [_Come Back To Us_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSEq1n8bYg) from the '1917' score. Are we deconstructing the soundtrack in this fic over the next few chapters? Perhaps, perhaps.
> 
> Tags have been updated for 'Parent Death' in a later chapter: it will be warned for in the relevant chapter, but I will say now that it is neither Will nor Eloise; no Major Character Death in this house. I'm just slowly putting tags on as I plot the scope of this fic out. Take care of yourselves, and please practice self-care where necessary.

_24 th May, 1913_

_Eloise, my dearest,_

_There are only so many words in the English language I have to love you with, and I fear that none of them will be enough. I will make the best go of it anyway._

_It still amazes me that we are married. It still does not seem quite real. Sometimes I fear that I have been living in a hazy dream far longer than I deserve, and that I will wake up and it will no longer be true._

_It is. It always is, and you do not know how glad I am of it._

_Your laugh sounds like wind-chimes, did you know? I never expect it; your voice is low and loud, and I suppose your laugh is the same, now that I think about it. But it also tinkles, softly. For once, the spring wind coaxes a kind, sweet song out of cold metal. It makes me feel like I am a child again, and I welcome it. How strange that is._

_But then, we were mere children when we met. It has been just over a decade since we first spoke. My goodness, how it has gone so quickly and so slowly all at once. That conversation in the schoolyard, do you remember? Those first remarks? Forgive me for those, Eloise. I was younger then, though that should be no excuse. And then you came to me after that fight with Francis Willoughby and turned the cards on me. I still don’t know why you did that, but I have not forgotten it. It is the first of an infinite number of reasons as to which I so adore you._

_Would we be here if we had not been there first? I won’t say I haven’t thought about it. If we had only met when Alice and Oliver pushed us together, would we be as we are? I don’t want to imagine my life now without you in it, but I realise that there are so many moments where we could have hit the rocks. Your father could have torn us apart half a dozen times._

_But then again, perhaps it does not matter. What does is that we are here now, that I wake up in the morning and wonder what new way I can love you. We have passion now, but I am not such a fool as to think that it will last forever. But that does not matter, either._

_When the passion dies, I will still be here. Even when my entire being dies—though I hope that is not for a long while yet—I will still be here. My love will still be here, even if my body is not. I promise you that for every day you live on this earth, my dear._

_It has brought me the greatest joy to be your husband this year. I can only hope the joy will swell with time, however much of it we have._

_Yours,_

_Will_

* * *

It is Will and Eloise’s fourth wedding anniversary.

And Will is not here.

This is not anything new; Will has been gone for ten months already, and he has been in France since the year began, but Eloise is still not used to him being gone. The house feels so much emptier without him.

She fills her days as best as she can, as close to the way she used to be. The truth is anything but. When she goes to the grocers, there is no way of knowing what they will have, or if she will be able to afford it with the skyrocketing prices, but she must go anyway. Eloise is a mother now–one of her children needs feeding, and the other needs her mother fed so that she can take as much milk as she wants.

Children. The word is still odd in her mouth. She is no longer a mother of one child, but two.

Ginnie was a surprise, to say the least. When the morning sickness had first started, Eloise had written it off as worry over her husband, even though he had only been gone a month. She’d written off the missed bleeding as a result of her deficient diet—between the lack of stock at the grocers and the fact that seventeen and six was not enough to feed a mother and growing child on, no matter how much Eloise tried to make it work, so she’d elected to let Edith eat whilst her own stomach suffered—but then her belly started pressing at the seams of her dresses and she’d been hit with the blinding, blinding truth.

She’d waited a fortnight to tell Will. She’d like to say it was because she didn’t know how he would react, but the truth, the harsher truth, was that she knew exactly what he would say.

 _I’m sorry,_ he’d written back. _I should be there with you._

She’d shaken her head and told him not to worry, but it was no use. He’d worried every week for the four months before they sent him out, whilst Eloise told him she was all right and pointedly did not tell him that she was going hungry.

A sharp cry rips through her thoughts, and Eloise bolts up, heading for the crib immediately. Both daughters are in the room, but it is Ginnie, not Edith—Eloise feels the difference in the pit of her chest without knowing how.

Ginnie howls with fierce lungs, louder than her sister ever was. Eloise picks her up from the crib and rocks her a little in her arms. “Hello, dear,” she says. “Is it already time for you to eat again?”

It is, and Eloise sits back down on the bed as Ginnie nurses, and Edith curls up on the bed beside her, leaning into her side.

“Oh, my darlings,” she says. “How good it is to have you here.”

She knows she cannot have Will today, and she does not dare to wish for it. Instead, she reaches over to the nightstand drawer, where she has stashed all the letters Will has ever sent home, and she chooses one at random. It will have to be enough.

She draws the letter to her, and almost chokes up. It is the first one he ever wrote, the one from their first wedding anniversary, the one she had looked at and had been surprised by. It was so unlike him to write it, and at the time, she couldn’t help but think to herself that there were other things she would rather have had instead, rather than a promise neither of them were sure he could keep.

Eloise wants to shake the version of herself from three years ago.

If she had known—if only she had known that there would come a time such as this—where the only thing she could have of Will was his letters, words she could reread over and over and feel the care he laced into every one—she wishes she had not scorned him like she did. Oh, she tried to rectify her mistake once she had made it, but the damage had already been done. He had not done it again until he had no choice to.

She runs her fingers over the ink, the perfectly rounded cursive, the parts he crossed out, one of them so hard that he tore a hole in the paper. She reads the words and thinks of her laugh that sounds like wind-chimes, and she laughs to herself and her girls just to try to understand what he hears in it. She can’t, but her efforts make Edith laugh too, and Ginnie nuzzles into her chest a little more, so the effort, Eloise thinks, is not entirely wasted.

Ginnie finishes nursing, and Edith looks at Eloise expectantly. “Down, Mummy?” she asks, and Eloise sighs. Getting both of her daughters successfully down the stairs without letting either of them out of sight is an art she’s still trying to perfect, but she knows she needs to get out of the bedroom.

She puts Ginnie in a Moses basket and tells Edith to follow her, and the three of them slowly manoeuvre themselves down towards the sitting room, Eloise carrying the basket and taking one step at a time, Edith following onto the step Eloise has just left. One step at a time, she tells herself whenever she is scared she will drop Ginnie as she helps Edith down. Just one step at a time. That’s how you’re going to do this.

They make their way to the sitting room eventually, and Eloise sets the Moses basket down on the rug and sits cross legged beside the bay window that looks out onto their front yard as Edith clambers up onto the armchair. It is far too big for her—it is big enough for both her parents to sit comfortably, but she takes to it like her throne, stretching her hands to each of the armrests, and Eloise, not for the first time, realises that her little girl is growing up.

Edith stares out of the window, whilst Eloise faces away. She cannot watch the street all afternoon. She will lose herself if she does, and her body is no longer hers to lose. She looks back and forth between her two girls, the lights of her life, and thanks God for them, as she does every day. They keep her on her toes and keep her from being alone with her own thoughts all day.

Yet despite her daughters, and despite her better judgement, her mind drifts to Will. She wonders what he is doing this very moment, if he is eating enough. She wonders if he can see the bright blue skies unmarred by cloud, the sun beating down and bathing the earth in precious warmth. She wonders, despite herself, if there is anything beautiful growing on the battlefields.

“Mummy!” Edith calls suddenly, pulling her out of the depths of her mind again, but she does not have time to thank her daughter for keeping her from spiralling, because Edith is pointing straight at the yard.

Eloise turns just in time to see a flash of movement up the path, and her heart leaps into her throat. She had not seen whether it was the regular postman or a telegram boy, and the difference could be life or death.

A dozen images flash through her mind in a moment. A telegram with her name on it, with _Regret to inform you that your husband Private William Schofield died of wounds._ Sarah crying as she held her newborn son. _Alfred was our little miracle. Andrew was so excited when I told him. Now they’ll never meet._ The red crosses docking at Reading War Hospital, bringing men from places Eloise hasn’t even heard of, still moaning for their mothers. The chilling thought that even if Will was gone, at least Edith looks like her father.

In the hall, a letter clanks through the mail slot and lands with a thud on the mat, and Eloise doubles over, crying out in relief. The telegram boy would have knocked. She is not a widow yet.

She tries to push herself up to retrieve the post, but she is shaking too hard and her legs will not hold. “Edith, love,” she says instead. “Would you go and get the post for Mummy? Come right back, darling.”

Edith does so dutifully, clambering down from the chair and toddling into the hallway whilst Eloise fixes her eyes on Ginnie just for somewhere to look, a stare that Ginnie matches. Eloise is thankful for it; at least one of them has nerves that are holding firm.

Edith comes back in, holding a letter between her tiny fingers. “Edith? Me? Papa?” she says, as she holds it out to her mother.

Eloise glances over at it. She would not have noticed if Edith had not pointed it out, but indeed, it is addressed to a Miss E Schofield, and Eloise knows her husband too well to think he’d make such a mistake. “Yes, love,” she says, smiling at her daughter. “I think Papa got your drawing from last week alright, then. Do you want to see what he wrote back?”

Eloise mimes opening a letter, and Edith follows. She makes a mess of the envelope, but she extracts the two sheets of paper from the ruins and holds them as if they were gold. Edith blinks at the pages for a minute, squinting at the letters all running into one another, but she cannot make head or tail of them and she thrusts the pages towards Eloise. “Mummy, read?”

Eloise smiles and pats the rug next to her, and Edith sits down. She looks into the Moses basket and beams at Ginnie. “Listen, Ginnie. Papa.” Ginnie, in return, blinks up at Edith, then beams back, and though Eloise knows they’ll soon graduate to pulling at each other’s hair before making up like nothing has happened by the end of the day, she can’t help but smile at her girls. She’ll take the peace whilst she has it. Hopefully, she’ll have Will back by the time it shatters.

She reads the letter out loud, trying to put the rises and falls in the sentences where she knows Will would put them. She does not quite succeed, but it makes the girls laugh, and warmth rolls off the paper in waves. For a moment, it is as if Will never left at all; as if he is right here in the sitting room, doting on his daughters like he always has.

In truth, part of him has never left. There are ghosts of him all over their house: the crib in the nursery where Ginnie now sleeps, or the highchair from which Edith flings food in the kitchen. The stain on the armchair from when he’d spilled tea over it. The bed linens that she swears still smell like him, the ones make her think, just for a fleeting, fleeting second, that she hasn’t woken up alone when she does in the morning. She wonders if the effect will hold when she buys new ones.

In the end, she concludes, it doesn’t matter. It is as Will said three years ago. _My love will still be here, even if my body isn’t._

Eloise was a sceptic then, and she still does not find fault in doing so. They were young, and they had no idea what the years would bring.

She has never been gladder to be proven wrong, as she finishes reading Will’s newest letter, and Edith holds the pages gently to her chest and swears she will never let them go. Eloise settles instead for the envelope, the _Schofield_ still intact on a scrap of the paper. She holds her daughters close and shows them their name, the one their father had first and has used to unite them, and she almost cries when Edith trips slowly over the syllables, until she finally says the word with pride.

A breeze nudges its way through the window, opened just a crack, a low, mellow voice Eloise knows like the beat of her own heart carried on the wind.

 _I am still here,_ he says.

Yes, she thinks. Yes, Will, you are.

* * *

_24 th May, 1916 _

_My dear Edith,_

_What a pleasure it was to receive your drawing! It is so lovely to know that you are thinking of me. I also very much enjoyed the cake you baked with Mummy_ _—_ _it makes a stark difference from the biscuits we get in France. Huntley and Palmers have slipped in standard lately. They say it’s because the company is making more important things for us men out here, but I disagree. I’d much rather have better biscuits._

_I am very sorry I was not able to be home for your birthday last week, even though you asked me very nicely. I want you to know that it is not because you have done anything wrong: I love you so very much, darling. It’s just that there are other men who have been here much longer than Papa has, and they deserve to go home and see their families before he does. It’s like when you have to wait in line at the grocers with Mummy. Papa has to wait his turn too. But I hear you help carry the bread home now. Is that true? My, my, Edith. How much you’ve grown!_

_Was your birthday nice? I hope it was as lovely and sunny as it is out here in France—you chose such an excellent time to be born, Edith—and that you got to cool down by the river when it got too hot. I know your Mummy was especially glad to get out of the house for some fresh air; she doesn’t like being cooped up for too long._

_Speaking of which, I think Ginnie is a lovely name for your sister! It is certainly much better than the one Papa gave her—Virginia makes her seem too old, doesn’t it? You and Mummy always knew better than me, and I have no doubt Ginnie will too when she is a bit older._

_Now, I need your help with something, Edith._

_If I have timed it right, this letter should arrive on a very special day for your mother and I: our wedding anniversary. But we haven’t celebrated it properly for a while—and I’m sure Mummy has been even more busy now that Ginnie is here._

_That’s where you come in. I need you to make sure that this year, she puts her feet up a little bit. Can you help me do that, Edith? If I send some more money home this week, can you make sure she actually buys new bed linens rather than scrubbing every last stain out of the old ones? I remember watching her do it when you were as small as Ginnie. It’s no easy feat, that’s for sure. Besides, if she has to do that again, that means less time with you girls, and I know she hates being away from you for too long._

_One last thing, sweetheart. It’s likely that I’ll have to be very brave soon, braver than I have ever been before, and I dare say it’ll be a lot easier to do it if I know I have my girls at home cheering me on. Will you keep thinking of me? I think of you and miss you constantly._

_I’m afraid I can’t send you anything as lovely as the drawing you sent me, but I hope that you all remain well and safe._

_All my love,_

_Papa_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today (27th May, 2020), is the 108th anniversary of the day I set as Will and Eloise's wedding day. It's sort of ironic that it turns out to be a chapter where they're not physically together! But they're together in spirit, as they are by this point in death, and I suppose that's what matters.
> 
> Thanks to Ealasaid, Pavuvu (new chapter of 'now we lie' just up!) and LadyCharity (beautiful, beautiful 'words over all' also just posted!) for their advice on writing letters for this chapter... my 'what do' was more rhetorical, but you came in with such solid advice anyway. Thanks to WafflesRisa for a discussion on Will and Eloise as a couple that fed so much into this chapter. 
> 
> Thanks also to [Heart of Stone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMY7nZHNp7U) from the musical Six that relates very little to the chapter, being about Jane Seymour, but has one line, 'My love will still be here', that struck me and would not let go. Actually, now that I think about it, the chorus _is_ very Eloise.
> 
> And most importantly, thank you to you reading this! We may be heading towards the scope of the rest of the series, but this is still just... so niche. If you are here, thank you.
> 
> Historical notes (because the author is a research fiend):
> 
>   * Separation allowances for wives whose husband was away fighting started at 12 shillings and sixpence, for the wife of a Private or Corporal, 3 shillings sixpence of which came from the soldier's wage (sixpence per day), the other 9 paid by the Government. If a soldier so wished, he could send more of his wage to increase the flow home. A wife and child received 17 shillings sixpence, with two children this increased to 21 shillings. Full info [here.](https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/28448)
>   * Huntley and Palmers was a biscuit manufacturer, operating in Reading, and the owners had so much influence on the town that Reading was allegedly known as 'Biscuit Town' until the 70s, and the local football team were known as 'The Biscuitmen.' During the First World War, they made many biscuits for the soldiers at the front, but the engineering division of its parent company turned their usual biscuit tin production to making other things needed for the war effort; mostly artillery shells, but also Brodie Helmets, water canteens, as well as their good old biscuit tins. Whether this impacted the biscuit quality is unknown and an artistic liberty taken by the writer.
>   * By end of May, 1916, the plans for the Somme Offensive likely wouldn't yet have been finalised, but there were definitely preparations being made for something to happen, and the men were likely to have seen and observed it.
> 



	6. croisilles wood; 1917

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from and highly recommended listening (seriously, if you're able, please consider putting it on): [Croisilles Wood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgrbtxkCG4E) from the 1917 score. 
> 
> Inspiration and two lines taken from [Heartstrings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzjDAKLSh0) by Jacob Lee, as well as further inspiration from [We Should Plant a Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh0egzgsfcU) by Ross Copperman.

Schofield is adrift.

Water seeps into his ears, blocking out any scrap of sound above the surface as he is swept along by the current.

Sunlight filters through spindly trees, casting a shimmer over the sky, but the bare black branches are not enough to keep the light from burning. A thought, the vital thought that he should look away before it blinded him does not shock through his system, reduced to a mere flutter. A rustle as a bird shifts in one of the trees, with boughs heavy and weeping over the waters. Water falls from the leaves onto his face as he passes underneath, rolling down his cheeks as if they were tears. Perhaps they are.

The trees continue to spit at him, drops falling on his sodden clothes, ricocheting off his hands, the only sign he still has them. He holds onto a log by his fingertips, lodged into cracks in the wood as Schofield tries to stay alive, but it is no use. Even the once harsh cut of the bark is beginning to fade away, like everything.

There are two boys on the left bank—schoolboys, trousers rolled up to their ankles as they wade into the mud, caking their shoes and socks in it. They laugh, as one picks up a handful of water and splashes it about, the other responding in kind, but Schofield cannot hear it, just the rush of the river.

They continue to play as he draws closer, and he recognises their faces when he does, knows them like the back of his hand. Oliver Marleigh and Henry Partridge, on the banks of the Thames as it runs through Christchurch Meadows. 

They shimmer into nothing as he passes. The sunlight claims them, wipes them from existence, as if they were never there at all. 

But not William Schofield.

Schofield is still in the river.

The water shivers and quickens around him. Gentle currents give way to rapids, silence turning to a cacophony, the spitting trees replaced by water as it splashes against boulders he had not seen before.

His fingers, numb, slide out of their cracks, and his log is swept downstream. Schofield lifts his head to keep it above the waterline, and immediately wishes he had not. Through the hazy afternoon, the waves crash white, buffeted against the banks, tipping over into a great unknown. He cannot stop the water. He cannot stop it from taking him. He can only sit up a little further, press his legs out straight in front of him, and hope that he will survive this.

Schofield tumbles over the edge of the world. The impact forces the breath out of his lungs.

* * *

Will breathes in again. 

He crosses his arms over his chest, presses his hand over his heart to check it is still beating. When he is as close to sure of the fact as he can be, he turns his head to the side to make sure he hasn’t woken Eloise. She has lost enough sleep because of him already.

She is not there.

Something bubbles in his chest, the next few breaths nowhere near enough, as Will comes to the conclusion that she has seen what a failure he is and left. He does not blame her for it.

“Love?” comes a voice from behind him.

Will turns, slowly, to see Eloise knelt by his side of the bed in her nightgown, and he exhales.

“Sorry, love. Did I wake you up?” she says, sliding something beneath the bed. “I was trying to be as quiet as possible, but I’m afraid the act of going to the toilet is louder than one might think.”

He waves her off. “Bad dream. Not your fault.”

Eloise looks him over, the way his chest still rises and falls in shallow breaths, and she climbs back onto the bed and cups his shoulder with her hand, feather light. He jumps at it anyway, but Eloise does not waver as she whispers, “I’m here, love. You’re safe. You’re at home.”

Will does not say anything. Syllables lodge in his throat, no strength to mould them into coherent words, let alone a sentence. He looks up at Eloise, her face just visible in the early morning light, pleading with her to hold him to the ground until he can do it himself. It is a burden she should not have to bear, and yet he asks it of her anyway.

She keeps her hand on his shoulder, stroking his collarbone with her thumb. “I’m here,” she says. “I’m right here.” 

When he can breathe freely again, she tucks her hand under his shoulder and helps him sit up. His back groans as he does so, as if he is old and haggard rather than a man of twenty-five, and he falls back against the pillows.

“What time is it?” he asks, when he checks his wrist and curses when he remembers it is still stopped at twelve past six. He realises, belatedly, that Eloise wouldn’t know either, that he has wasted his breath.

He is wrong. She looks at the window, as sunlight creeps around the edge of the curtains, and she says, “Sun’s coming up, so probably around half past three—no, four. Half past four. I keep forgetting that the clocks went forward.” 

It is a revelation Will is still getting used to, that England is now on the same time as France during the summer months.  _ It’s odd of me,  _ Eloise said when she explained it to him,  _ but I was strangely happy knowing I was living the same time as you, even if we were a hundred miles apart.  _ He had not known how to reply.

He still does not know how to, so he drags his wrist across his eyes to shake sleep out of them. Eloise tells him he can go back to sleep, but Will shakes his head. He knows he will not fall again tonight, and he may as well face the day.

“All right, but you can just rest here for a while,” says Eloise. “Would you like to come out later, though?”

Will doesn’t say anything, just ducks his head and fiddles with the bedsheets, because the honest answer is  _ not really. _

“Please?” Eloise says, a tremor in her voice. “Will, love, you haven’t been outside in a week. We have Mass at nine; will you come?”

“Oh,” he says. “Is it Sunday already?” He had not realised it had been so long. As much as Eloise reminds him he is here with her in their home, the English days blur together, mixed up and muddied, just like the ones that passed in France.

Eloise smiles and nods. “Which is why you should rest. But will you come out? In a while?”

“In a while,” he echoes, leaning sideways to press his shoulder against hers. She takes the weight without even flinching, her arm shifting slightly to hold him. Her touch is soft and warm, a gentle fire in a room that seems too cold even though Will knows the coldest spring he has ever known has already passed. It is as if the cold wormed its way into his very soul and he has brought it back with him to their house, and Eloise is trying to melt the ice into soft running water again. He does not know how to tell her she is fighting a losing battle.

“Why?” he says, before he can stop himself. He does not know quite what he is asking.  _ Why are you still here? Why are you still trying? Why do you still let me lie in your bed?  _ He scared her mere days ago, knocking her as he bolted upright from a dream in the pitch-black night. He remembers what she said;  _ the night has never felt so dark,  _ instead of her converse statement a mere nine days before that, full of wonder at having her husband beside her for good.  _ The night no longer feels as dark,  _ she’d said.  _ Will you stay awhile? _

_ Why are you letting me do this to you?  _ he thinks, and it is the closest he can come to the truth.

Eloise puts her other arm around him and pulls him close to her, until his head rests against her chest and he can feel the beat of her heart, the hum of her voice as she begins to murmur.

“To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part,” she recites. “And we are not parted yet. I made you a vow, Will. I swore it. Five years won’t make me forget it that easily.”

He stiffens against her. “Oh.”

“It’s all right,” she says, her voice turning bright again, as it has been every time he saw her since he left. “You remembered last year–do you know how happy you made me and the girls with your letter?”

It was not what you deserved, he thinks, but he does not say it. Instead, he shakes his head weakly. Eloise shifts, pushes him back up to a sitting position that he just manages to hold. 

“You made Edith laugh. And that made me laugh, and Ginnie smiled—though that might just have been gas—and I couldn’t have asked for anything else. Let me do the same.”

He can barely look at her, but he forces himself to. In another life, he could have taken today and given her the world with it, infinite possibilities laid out before him. A carving to replace the sculpture on the mantelpiece, the one she bought when they were newly married, to Will’s great dismay—though after five years, he doesn’t find it so bad. A trunk to put at the end of the bed, to keep all their odds and ends in. A chess set, a spoon to stir cake batter, bookends for the shelves that are spilling over because they aren’t allowed to put up new ones, being tenants and all.

He can offer her none of that. Will is not blind to the fact he cannot return to the workshop; it is one of the few things that pushes through the smokescreen that separates him from the rest of the world, striking him like a knife. All Eloise has ever asked of him is stability, and he has failed in it. He cannot keep the sorrow from his face as she looks away, smoothing the sheets on her side of the bed.

There is only one thing he can give her. Will glances over at the nightstand where his wooden hand rests, haunting and still. His other hand trembles on the sheets, and he has nothing to calm it with. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says. “You don’t have to be, love.”

_ “ _ How can I not?” he says, and gets no reply.

A few metres away, Ginnie begins to fuss in her crib. Eloise exhales sharply and stands to take her. She keeps her back to him as she does, continues to as she bounces Ginnie in her arms. Will sinks down into the mattress, shivering. 

Ginnie does not settle, and Eloise sighs. “You want to see Papa? I bet Papa wants to see you,” she says, coming back to the bed and setting Ginnie in her lap on the sheets.

“Hello,” he says, before he can stop to think about it. He holds his hand out as Ginnie reaches for him. “Oh, I know. It’s never nice waking up from a nap, is it? But it’s all right. You’re all right, Ginnie.”

She fusses for a few moments more, then settles, staring up at him with dark eyes, just like her mother’s. Her hand shifts, her little fingers curling around his, and it is still such a wonder after all this time that he can’t help but stare. 

She is so grown already. She turned one no more than an hour before Will dashed to save the Devons, a fact he had not let himself acknowledge until his duty was done. He has no idea what Eloise did for it—with her not writing, and him barely getting down three lines that didn’t say much at all. The only thing he does know is that his daughter had her one and only birthday thus far on the other side of the Channel, and he was not there.

But he can be here now. As much as it feels like he is blindly stumbling through fog, as much as he feels like part of him is dead and buried under France, gone and never to return, he can be here now. He holds out both arms for her, and Eloise passes her over before slipping over to the window to pull open the curtains.

Light streams into the room, falling in waves and illuminating Ginnie’s face, her indelicate nose and her tufts of dark hair, every inch her mother’s daughter. She fusses a little as the sun hits her eyes, then buries her face in his chest, right over his heart where she has always sat. 

“It’s all right,” he echoes, rubbing her back with his hand, shifting his other arm up a little to support her head. “I’m here, darling.”

Ginnie turns her head to the side. Her soft breaths are a gentle breeze brushing against his wrist, sending a shiver up his arm. The sensation shocks him back to reality, keeps him with his youngest child for a few moments more.

Eloise ties back the curtains and shakes her head when he asks if they should fetch Edith. “She gets grouchy when you wake her up too early, though when she  _ does _ want to wake up is anybody’s guess. Sometimes she gets up at three in the morning and wants to babble—wasn’t so bad when Ginnie was waking me up too, but now that she’s sleeping through the night—really, is it too much to ask for eight solid hours of sleep?”

“She’s woken at the same time every day since I’ve been back.”

Eloise shifts to the window. “Would you look at that? Not a cloud in sight,” she says then, looking up at the sky. “Beautiful day to go outside.”

Will shifts to the window to look, to confirm that it is, in fact, a beautiful sunny day, before his attention shifts to a little patch of bare soil in the front yard. “What happened to the poppies?”

Eloise grows them every year. She plants them in October, and they burst with colour just as May turns to June. The first year, he wasn’t sure what to make of them, with their sharp red petals and small black seed. But now they are not here, now they have spilled over the sea to fill the battlefields in Europe, he wants them back. He wants them only to be here, where he knows Eloise will keep them contained to one little flower bed.

“They didn’t survive the winter,” says Eloise. “I tried, but in the end, I had to let them go. And besides—perhaps it’s for the best. Mother showed me a magazine Millie sent from London—oh, never mind.”

“Hmm?” Will asks, belatedly. “What was that?”

She shakes her head. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Never in the five years of their marriage has ‘don’t worry about it’ ever slid without an argument or at least a full discussion. They don’t have to come to an agreement, but at the very least they can say they talked about it, rather than building up years of fear and resentment that destroys a house from the inside out. But Will is too tired to have one now, so he lets it go.

“I might finally plant those daffodils,” Eloise continues. “Those don’t need so much care—and the bulbs grow back every spring, so you don’t have to worry about replanting them.”

“That might be nice,” Will mutters, an echo of her reply to his suggestion from years ago.

“Or maybe something more permanent. Plant a tree or something.”

They can’t, and he tells her as much. They rent the house; the land isn’t theirs to permanently shape. An annual flower lasts one growing season, a perennial growing back every year, but a tree is a lifelong investment. Will has carved trunks that were well over a half century in age. That little patch of soil will not hold something so great as the kings of the forest, not if they want to see it through to maturity.

“No, I know,” says Eloise. “But we won’t live here forever. One day, we’ll have a spot of land where we can let something spread its roots in the soil, and its branches high up into the sky. One day. Let me make that promise to you. That’s where we’ll be one day.”

“The future isn’t guaranteed,” he says. “Nothing is. This war isn’t over, and who knows when it will. Or if there’ll be English land to plant trees in when it does. You can’t promise me that.”

“Then we’ll call it hope,” she replies, without missing a beat, her voice light but unshakeable. “Hope that is still life yet to come. Now, do you have any suggestions as to what we might plant, when the time comes?”

He does not. Will knows trees, knows the different grains of their bark, can differentiate pine from cedar with a single sniff, but all that knowledge goes up in flames, the acrid smoke working its way into his lungs until he can barely breathe with the thought of all he has lost, and it leaves no room for anything else.

“Well, just think about it,” says Eloise, when he just shrugs. “We’ve got time. Couldn’t plant one until the autumn, anyway; it’d die otherwise. Just—have a think about it.”

It is Will’s turn to exhale, sharply, a code between them that there was nothing more to add and the conversation ought to end.

Eloise does not end it.

She stares back at him. "Will. You're still here. I’m still here. Tomorrow will come. Tell me you’ll think about it."

It is not easy to do so. Everything has changed—even the unspoken rules of their marriage have been twisted up and spat out the other side, a mere shadow of what they were before. The winds of change have turned the earth upside down, and the storm has not yet passed.

But he does not say that, because he owes it to Eloise to do the one thing she asks of him now, after failing her for so long, and he clings to that as he hums out some sort of agreement. Because Ginnie stares up at the cloudless sky as if she is threatening the entire universe, daring it to do anything other than give her the future she deserves. Because in the next room, Edith wakes from weary slumber and wails, a noise that Eloise knows within five seconds of Edith making it means that she’s wet the bed, and goes to change her into dry clothes, leaving Ginnie in his care.

Because the mundanity of everyday life as a husband and father again is a tidal wave, crashing over him and sweeping him all the way to rocky English shores.

When Eloise and Edith return, they find him with his head bowed, shivering, as he attempts to stifle a sob and does not quite succeed. They do not tell him to stop. Edith curls up against his side. Ginnie rests against his chest and does not fuss even when he knocks her about. Eloise places a soft hand on his back, and when he does not jump at her touch, presses up against it.

William Schofield sits on his wedding bed, and his women hold him until he calms. For a moment, however fleeting and undeserved, he does not feel so alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER EDITED 21/06: Fairly major edits to last section—Ah, a multi-chap fic that is posted bit by bit. Sometimes, emotional arcs change as the fic is being plotted. Credits to Ealasaid for some notes that will probably make the work stronger in the long run. 
> 
> Original notes:
> 
> Hello again! It's been a while, hasn't it? The author has been taking some time to finish her exams (all done now, thank goodness), consider this chapter now that we've approached the point of the film canon, and in general just be a human existing in the 3D world. I hope everyone reading is keeping well and safe.
> 
> Easter Eggs/historical notes:
> 
> Daylight Savings was introduced in 1916, as a response to the need to conserve fuel needed for electric power—first done by Germany and Austria, before the rest of the world followed suit with Britain implementing what is now BST on the 21 May, 1916. France did so on the 14th June, I believe, meaning that for about two and a half weeks, Britain and France were indeed on the same time. France discontinued the use of daylight savings after WWII, as did most countries on CET, before picking it up again in 1976. Britain, on the other hand, has continually used it since 1916—apart from two occasions: during WWII when Britain was on British Double Summer Time—GMT+2, and an experiment in 1968-71, where the government tested the use of BST year round. Nowadays, we Brits are back on a good old schedule of forward in March, back in October.
> 
> The magazine that Eloise refers to is _Punch!_ which first published the famous John McCrae poem, 'In Flanders Fields', at the end of 1915.


	7. sugar, spice, and nothing nice; 1918

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: [_A Scrap of Ribbon_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjhplyK7-w0)

William finds himself sitting alone at the kitchen table at three in the morning.

The sun has not yet risen, the new day not yet begun. If he looks out of the window, he sees nothing but night, a stark difference to the glowing gas lamp in the kitchen he finally managed to turn on. There’s a trick to it; he grasps the lighter between his thumb and two forefingers, pulls on the gas chain with the remaining two, and pretends he can’t hear the chain rattling, disturbed by his trembling hand.

There is a glass of water on the table, and he forces his shaking fingers through a senseless rhythm. Pick up the glass, take a drink. Set it back down with a quiet thud. A minute later, do the same, over and over; a cycle he cannot escape, but one that is better than the low rumble of guns piercing the silence he can almost hear otherwise.

It is the 27th day of May. 

At least he actually remembers this year. At least he has half a plan to do something for it, though who knows if he’ll succeed in the attempt.

William drags himself up and over to the cupboards beneath the stove. He finds the little blue notebook Eloise keeps tucked next to the meagre bag of flour; all that’s left of her run to the grocers’ last week whilst she left the girls with her mother above the pub as William worked downstairs.

There aren’t many people in the pub, these days. All the men are gone, and half of those that remain are teetotallers, say the grain should go on flour for bread. There isn’t much bread around. There isn’t much of anything, and there is even less of it now the rationing has begun.

Which is why, when he pulls out an iron pan, bowls, and ingredients to make pancakes, the one thing he might just be able to manage, he finds that they don’t have any eggs.

He flicks through Eloise’s notebook, trying to find something he might be able to whip together before the sun rises. To surprise her and the girls—they’ve brought him breakfast more times than he can count, on the days he couldn’t even drag himself out of bed, and it is time that William returns the favour.

But as he rifles through pages and pages of handwritten recipes, he has no idea if he can make any of them—or at least, none of the ones Eloise actually likes. She puts stars by some of the recipe titles—the apple pie she first made for him, the biscuits that seem to be her staple, but she’s put a star by the ginger snaps he once loved and not by the shortbread he knows she prefers, and so he is none the wiser. 

He stands, and stares back and forth between the bowls and the frying pan like the great truths of the matter will suddenly put themselves before him. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he still finds himself disappointed when they do not come, and all he is doing is staring at a black puddle cast in iron, wondering if he can find himself in the abyss. 

A wind whistles through the open window. William stills. He cannot help but hear it, for there is nothing else to hear, but he wishes he does not.

His stomach clenches. All of a sudden, he can hear nothing but the air on still days, when there was nothing else to do but wait, and wait, and wait, wondering if something would pierce the quiet. 

He turns his head, slowly, and stares at the open window; the very one he’d opened because he somehow felt too stuffy even in his own large kitchen, willing his feet to take him across the room to close it. They will not obey him. For once, William remains stiff, rooted to the ground, and if his heart were not pounding in his chest he might have found the good humour to see the irony in it.

A second wind blows through, and he grasps the edge of the stove to steady himself as it threatens to topple him over. It meets with the first and swells, buffeting William’s very soul. The winds whistle in his ears, howling, the sum of every little thing that has soured his life thus far. The pain in the pit of his chest has half a dozen sources, and all of them are back to haunt him. He isn’t sure where to look. He looks everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Then, a creak in the hallway. 

The winds simmer down to silence, but William lifts on the balls of his toes, inching towards the stove. A low hum thrums in his ears as he waits for whatever enemy waits there.

A second. William reaches for the stove. His fingers close slowly around the frying pan handle, and he raises it beside him, base of the pan round and ready to strike.

His breathes deeply as he aims the pan at the empty doorway as the creaks keep coming, drawing ever closer, until eventually–

A light.

A light, from an old oil lamp, that illuminates Eloise’s face.

William exhales as he drops the pan back onto the stove with a sudden clatter that still startles him, even though he was the source of it. At the same time, Eloise hurries down the hall. When she is close enough, he sees that her other hand clasps Ginnie’s, tightly, and in Ginnie’s other hand is Edith. 

All three spill out into the light of the kitchen. Eloise has dark circles under her eyes, and she blinks slowly to try and seem awake. Ginnie’s are red and bear the marks of hastily dried tears. With her free hand, Edith covers her mouth to stifle a yawn.

William opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes. His heart, still lodged in his throat, means that any of the meagre words his mind can cobble together don’t make it past his lungs, and all he can do is stare at his women and try to breathe. It takes everything he has.

William Schofield. Twice decorated for gallantry, scared of his bloody wife. 

Eloise picks up the girls and sits them at the kitchen table, then gets them a glass of water each. “Ginnie had a nightmare,” she supplies so William doesn’t have to ask. “And you weren’t in bed, so I couldn’t bring her down without Edith too.”

Edith, thankfully, makes no fuss about this turn of developments, but she does rest the side of her head on the table and attempts to go back to sleep. When that fails, she sits up and resorts to sticking out her tongue at Ginnie, which cheers the latter up immediately. They giggle under the dim kitchen lamp, and Eloise smiles as she watches the turn of events.

Then she turns to William, who still hasn’t moved. “What did you want down here, Will?”

He shrugs, as he finally calms enough to force out a sentence. “I wanted—goodness, this is going to sound ridiculous—I wanted to—make you pancakes or something.”

Her lips form a soft O. “Oh, love. You didn’t—”

“No, I wanted to,” he cuts in, before she can finish the sentence. “Breakfast is the least I can do. Especially today.”

Her shoulders sag. “But?”

“But then I realised we don’t have any eggs.”

Despite everything, Eloise lets out a small laugh. “Try getting those at the grocers. All gone to the wounded men in the hospitals.”

William hasn’t spent enough time looking under the kitchen stove to notice. He’s been flitting back and forth between their house and the pub for the last year. Leaves at eleven, gets sent home just in time for an early dinner—at his father-in-law’s insistence, and the act is almost certainly more for Eloise’s sake than William’s—and doesn’t return home for good until they are asleep. Creeps up the stairs and into bed, trying not to wake the girls. Fails, most of the time; Edith sneaks out from behind her bedroom door to give him a kiss goodnight, and as he tucks her into bed he can never calm the part of him that is still on edge, having dealt with what is left of Reading’s drinking population all night. 

But he is here now, in the light of the early morning, and even though he’s barely slept, the rest of his family is awake, and William owes it to them to at least try to be some semblance of the same.

“Do you still want to bake something?” Eloise asks. She picks up the notebook from where he’d set it on the side of the cooking range, flips through, then sighs “Though goodness only knows what. You _can_ make cake without eggs, if we had any sugar; I did it when—”

She cuts herself off. For once, William notices.

“When? When what?”

Eloise suddenly looks very interested in her fingernails.

“ _Eloise._ ”

“When I made that fruitcake I sent to you two years ago, when you were still in France.”

He hums. “I see. But why would you—what’s wrong with that?”

She exhales, sharply. “They call it trench cake. The government gave us the recipe—households up and down the country made it to send to their men. As I did to you.”

“I see.”

“I just—I didn’t think you’d want to be reminded of the war, that’s all.”

William almost laughs, because it would hardly matter. Everything reminds him of the war anyway. Quiet reminders of present happiness, of the miracles that are his wife and children, are still not enough to keep his head from all that has happened to bring him here. How could they, when the fight is not over? William gave his hand to save the Devons, but he is not so naive to think he saved them for good. They could have died a thousand times in the last year. For all he knows, they could be dying this very moment.

But he cannot tell his family that. He cannot drag them down with him, so he squares his shoulders and clears his throat. “Is there anything we can actually manage?”

Eloise looks back down at the book, continuing to flick through. “Is this something you want to do yourself, or something you want to do together?”

Even such a simple question as that has William deliberating over what the correct answer is. On the one hand, he doesn’t want her to lift a finger—this is his gift to her, after all. On the other—would she be offended if he excluded her? Would she take it as him blocking her out—again? 

He makes his choice. “Myself. Please.”

Eloise hums. “All right.”

“What does that mean?” 

She hums again. “It means I’ve got to find a recipe which doesn’t have any milk.”

Ah, William thinks. A result of all the times Eloise has opened a bottle without warning him first and he has choked at the smell of it.

He holds out a hand, to stop her from troubling herself unnecessarily. “If it’s too hard, we can do it together—you can stir the milk in whilst I’m out of the room.”

Eloise shakes her head, waving him off. “No, it’s all right. Besides, we’re out of milk and the milkman won’t arrive for another few hours.” She hums to herself and mutters, then sighs. “Oatcakes. I think that’s all we can manage.” She looks—almost pitiful, a barely hid apology on her face. She catches herself after a few moments, taking a deep breath as she sits up. “But at least it’s something _to_ manage, and a good oatcake is better than nothing,” she says. “Now, the oats are down there in the cupboard, on the bottom right. Go grab them, and we’ll get started.”

The recipe is simple enough—some butter cut off the side of the block that lives in their butter dish and melted down added to two breakfast cups of oatmeal, a little salt, then the entire thing mixed together. 

When William finds that it’s rather difficult to stir the butter into the oatmeal without the bowl spinning around wildly when he doesn’t have another hand to steady it, Ginnie and Edith toddle up to the counter and hold it down with tiny fists, then help him shape the mixtures into little round cakes, insisting on pressing cups into the dough he rolls out. He does not stop them—whilst Eloise is taking everything in her stride, he knows that his daughters would be more than disappointed if he did not let them help. He knows he has made the right decision as they sit before the oven, eyes wide, and ask incessantly if the cakes are ready, and their satisfied munching on the finished product makes William feel a little better about the whole affair.

Once the girls have had their fill, William takes the tray and holds it out to Eloise, who takes one and nibbles on it, then hums. “It’s breakfast. And it’s better than the porridge made with warm water we get every other morning.”

It isn’t much. It is the hollowest of victories, so empty that it might as well not be one at all. 

But if it is all he has to keep his head above water, William will have to take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, folks! I hope you've all continued to be well! Spent a little time away, once again, but we're back and I hope that there won't be such a very long wait until the next chapter. Until next time!
> 
> Historical notes:
> 
> 1\. The trench cake is very real—I am actually going to try the recipe one of these days. [Here's the one I'll be using, with more on the history!](https://rosemaryandporkbelly.co.uk/trench-cake/)
> 
> 2\. The 2nd Devons were, in fact, dying that very instant, at the Bois de Buttes, on the first day of the Third Battle of the Aisne, in what I'm sure we all know as the Last Stand of the Second Devons. Historically, it is essentially as depicted in Ealasaid and Pavuvu's 'now we lie', including the bit where 120 men joined later because for some reason, they were at the Transport Lines when the battle begun. (Joseph Blake survives in this verse in a similar manner, because the LadyCharity and I have no better explanation.)


	8. women weep but hear no sound upstairs; 1919

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title and epigraph from _The Roads Also_ by Wilfred Owen.

> _Though their own child cry for them in tears,  
>  _ _Women weep but hear no sound upstairs.  
>  _ _They believe in love they had not lived  
>  _ _And passion past the reach of stairs  
>  _ _To the world’s towers or stars._

Eloise pulls the needle up between two stitches of wool. 

“This is terrible,” she mutters, looking at the mess she has just made of the right seam of the olive vest she’s knitting for Will. She’s usually better at seams than she is as simple embroidery, but today it seems that even that is beyond her. “Do you know that one time I got into trouble because of my poor needlework?”

“I do,” says Annabel Chapman, knitting a blanket for what will be her fourth child. “I heard that’s how you met your husband.”

Next to her, Alice hums, a pink cardigan in her own hands. “It is. I was there. I believe Abigail has forgiven you for it by now, Eloise.”

Eloise would hope she has, given that the incident in question was sixteen years ago—sixteen years and two months since that bright day in the middle of March that has lead all the way here, to an uncomfortable chair and the olive yarn looped into hundreds of stitches in her hands, amongst women who are all doing the same thing.

The knitting circle began when Winifred suggested knitting together so that the cousins could spend some time playing and the mothers could forget that the fathers were absent, if only for a little while. The endeavour quickly expanded with more than a few of Reading’s women being in the same boat. Between the lot of them, they’d watched each other’s children whilst making more socks, scarves, and mittens than their menfolk could ever need, the surplus instead going to those who were not so fortunate as to have gifts from home. 

Nowadays, the circle has fragmented into four smaller circles of friends. Eloise’s is half a dozen women in size, and they gather fortnightly to continue making garments for their families.

She finishes sewing the seam and holds the completed vest up to the light. When she turns it right side out and the malformed stitches are masked, it does not seem so bad—not terrible enough that anyone would accuse her husband of being improperly dressed, in any case.

But it does not hide the fact that the vest is in the same dull olive she bought when she made that cardigan for him two winters ago, the wool being a colour Eloise had in enough excess that buying more would be unjustified.

She turns the vest towards the other women. “Does this look plain to you?”

In return, she gets a few shrugs, and one confirmation from Winifred that her brother won’t mind either way, as long as it fits right and is warm. Eloise hums, stares once again at the vest, which really just is a swathe of unbroken dull olive, and she resolves to put at least  _ one  _ other colour on it.

She asks to borrow some of Annabel’s thread, for they are knitting today on the tiled space in her garden on account of the fact that the woman is seven months pregnant, and is grateful when Annabel hands it over without making a dig at what is well known as Eloise’s poor needlework.

She begins to poke in and out between woollen stitches, thankful that now she is sewing on the flat rather than joining two pieces of fabric together, keeping one eye on her work and the other on her daughters. Edith sits with the other girls on an old picnic blanket, talking about how they will one day be Britannia at Empire Day as Mary Teller was only three days ago, and trying not to be disturbed as Lee Moore and the Chapman cousins draw circles around them. Ginnie, on the other hand, bucks up the courage even at three years old to take them at their own game, toddling around until she and the boys collapse onto the grass, out of breath, drawing smiles from their mothers.

“I swear, it’ll all change the day Frank gets back,” says Annabel, looking over at her son and two daughters. “I don’t know how those three are going to fare, having a father in the house. Samuel and Barbara barely even know who he is.”

Eloise bites the inside of her lip. If the Chapman children are anything like her own, they will have to learn who their father is. Even if they already knew him, as Edith did, she can guarantee that he will not be the same father on his return. He will likely not be the same man on his return, for that matter. She doesn't know how to say it.

“When’s he due back?” asks Winifred. 

“They say in the next few weeks,” says Annabel, and Eloise hums. Annabel’s husband is in the 5th Battalion, and they had promised that his service would only be for the duration of the war. “Six months after the end, and I’m still waiting.”

“It’ll all change,” she says, finally, because she feels like she has to temper her expectations. She drops her voice—the children might be preoccupied with their games, but that hasn’t stopped them from overhearing—and repeating—things that their mothers would rather keep out of their minds. “It won’t be the same, for you, not just your children. You just have to cope with this different world, and take every day as it comes. Take his moods as they come up. Keep your head up high, even when you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Wendy Moore, Alice’s sister-in-law, clicks her tongue. “You’re one to talk. Husband got two medals, the DCM awarded at Reading War Hospital for all of the town to see—by the King, no less. You should be proud of him.”

Eloise doesn’t say that Will returned from the hospital wearing the brand new uniform they had sent to him just for the occasion, the one he wore on the Front apparently too worn and ragged to put before His and Her Majesty, and immediately folded it up to give back to the Army.  _ Some poor soul still fighting needs it better than I do.  _ She doesn’t say that he put that medal straight into a box on a high shelf, and has not mentioned or looked at it once since he received it. She doesn’t say that he seemed far happier when Edith and Ginnie woke him up the next morning with an enthusiastic if out-of-tune song for Will’s 26th birthday. 

_ I don’t think he’s proud of himself.  _ Eloise catches the thought between her teeth. No need to bring down the room with melancholy. “Just—be careful,” she echoes. “You won’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what  _ I’m  _ doing. I do things and half the time Will flies off the handle without warning, and the other half I’m lucky if he reacts at all. I don’t know if he’s going to want this,” she says, holding up the vest in her hands, the neckline half dotted with little brown crosses. “He’ll take it and smile, because I made it, but if he’ll actually  _ like  _ it is another matter.”

She grits her teeth. She swore to herself she wouldn’t do this. Will has it worse, she knows it, knows it from his aversion to milk or all the times she has coaxed him out from under the kitchen table after he has buried himself there after a storm. She has to be the stone pillar to hold up her house and family; it is her duty to do so.

But—if it isn’t bloody  _ hard  _ at times. If she doesn’t blindly stumble through each day, accounting for whichever of Will’s two alternate states of being, fear and hollowness, is at the forefront today. “I love him. More than anything. I’ll stand by him for the rest of our lives. But I don’t know how best to care for him, sometimes.”

“At least you still have a husband to care for,” says Sarah. There is a tear in her eye. Next to her, Alice sits up straight, back becoming a stiff board.

And Eloise wants to shake herself.

“I—I suppose we all have our struggles,” she says, but Sarah has already stuck her needles through her ball of yarn and crossed the room to retrieve her son from the gaggle of children, staring up and tracing pictures in the clouds with their fingers. Alfred protests at being lifted from his friends, but Sarah does not seem to hear him, telling him that there’ll be a nice pot of dinner tonight, with bread and butter pudding for dessert, which cheers the boy up immediately as his favourite. Sarah retrieves their coats and shoes and is out of Annabel’s house with no more than a cursory goodbye to the group.

Eloise shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, resisting the urge to bury herself into the floor. “Me and my mouth.”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting, perhaps something to assuage her raging stomach. It does not come. Alice stares blankly into the wall, Annabel grows very interested in the section of lace she’s working on, and Wendy sets her mouth into a cold line. 

Winifred sighs. “The war came back to us,” she says, her eyes glassy and distant. “It came right back from the battlefields and settled in our houses. And now all we can do is try not to be torn asunder.”

“Your husband isn’t back either,” says Eloise, narrowing her eyes. “How would you know?”

“Who said it was my husband?” Winifred replies. She does not go on, and Eloise does not push her. Instead, she takes all the frustration bubbling up inside her and turns it to the needle in her hand, stabbing it through the vest with gusto. She forces herself to calm when she realises that anger might show in the finished product, that it might feel unwelcoming and uncomfortable. She cannot have that. The rest of the world is too uncomfortable for him as it is.

Eloise does not say another word until it is time to leave.

* * *

She stalls in her front yard. Whilst this is not the time to break, to go down on her knees and beg, she cannot help but feel like she will end up doing so anyway if she does not take a moment to breathe here first. 

The girls do not have the same reservations, bounding up to the door and knocking with tiny fists because neither is tall enough to reach the door knocker. Eloise does not know what time it is, but she doubts that Will is close enough to the door to hear their little knocks, so she rummages around in her bag for her keys, which are tucked somewhere under the best she has managed to stow there for safekeeping until she can spend five minutes with some brown paper—although that’s providing that she can find the meagre scrap of ribbon she swears is in a drawer—somewhere.

She is wrong. She is so very wrong, because the door swings open just as she unearths her keys, sending the vest tumbling to the ground.

Will’s head drops to stare at it, and Eloise does the same. For a moment, they are fixed there, not knowing what to do or say next.

The answer is provided for them. “Mummy made that for you, Papa!” says Ginnie. “One time she was knitting until two o’clock in the  _ morning.” _

“Ginnie!” says Eloise.

“Did you really?” asks Will, head lifting to look at her. “And come in; you’ll let a draught in if you don’t, and no one wants to catch a chill when summer’s on its way.”

Eloise agrees and shuffles the girls inside, tells them to help their father lay the table for some soup that she made this morning and just has to heat up again on the stove. On the way in, she picks up the vest that has fallen onto the top step and dusts off the dirt pushed up by stubborn weeds through stone cracks. 

She clicks her tongue. “And here I was, hoping to have this all nice and wrapped for you,” she says, shaking out the vest both to make sure she hasn’t missed a spot and in hope that Will will forget Ginnie’s admission. “Now I’ll have to put it in with the rest of the Monday washing before you can wear it.”

Will takes it from her. “Well, the plus of having something this colour is that dirt and mud doesn’t really show up on it. It’ll actually be in need of a wash when someone splashes beer on it.”

Eloise looks over. “Wait—you don’t mean you’re going to wear it to the pub tonight?”

Will shrugs.

_ “Will.” _

“Gifts are meant to be used, not stuffed in the back of the wardrobe for years. My wife knitted me a vest to keep me warm and against all good advice stayed up at night to do it _.  _ What better proof of love is there? The world should know it.”

Eloise weakly protests that if her mother found out she was sending out her menfolk in dirty clothes, but she doesn’t have much of an argument. Besides, she can’t hide the blush on her cheeks. She’s a little tickled that he wants to wear it immediately, so she acquiesces. Will pulls it over his head, and there is a ghost of a smile on his lips that seems as genuine as any she has ever seen from him, and Eloise’s shoulders sag in relief. There will be no pebble weight in the pit of her stomach tonight, no analysis of what she could have done differently. 

She cannot help herself from crossing over to him and straightening out the vest—which fits him perfectly, because Eloise hasn’t been married for seven years not to know exactly how big her husband is in all respects—and brushing off the last stray flecks of dirt because drunk patrons in a dim pub might not be able to see them, but her eyes can under the warm glow of the kitchen light.

“You don’t need to fuss, Eloise,” Will says. “No one will care.” 

_ This is good English society,  _ Eloise thinks.  _ Presentation matters here, even if all that went out the window when you were away. _ She does not say it, because it would not help anyone to do so. Besides, Will has a watch strap still caked in mud from some French battlefield, because he had not let the watchmaker change it when the mechanism was fixed.

She steps back, looking at her handiwork, connecting the red crosses around the neckline with her finger. “These are crooked. I tried my best, but I’m afraid that you’ll just have to go out with the results of your wife’s improper needlework—”

“Eloise, if you  _ don’t  _ want me to wear it, which almost defeats the point of making it in the first place, then you only have to say so.”

She looks up at him. “What? No, no, I  _ want  _ you to, I just—”

She cuts herself off, because she does not have an explanation immediately, and she knows better than to say it when she eventually finds one, when she realises that this morning’s conversation is weighing heavy on her mind; Will has responded well to her gift now, seems some sort of genuinely pleased for the first time in weeks and Eloise does not want that fragile happiness to be shattered when he wears it outside for the entire world to see. Life has not been kind to him thus far—she does not want to see him shattered under her watch.

_ Who are you really trying to protect, Eloise? Is it Will, who is too well versed in this already, or is it yourself? _

Her shoulders fall as she relinquishes her concern. “It’s nothing. Just something that happened at Annabel’s earlier—women’s talk that you don’t need to know about. I’d be delighted if you wore the vest tonight.”

Will tugs at the hems of the vest again to straighten it, then runs his fingers up and down the front, feeling the yarn. “This feels nice.”

Eloise is about to joke that he must be tired of the scratch of wool by now, but it does not seem right. Instead, she smiles, muttering that she’s glad it does, and patting Will’s shoulder twice, a final seal of approval. 

_ Nice,  _ she thinks.  _ Nice is good enough. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming back for this chapter! The irony is that I have been writing a ton in this universe (as LadyCharity can attest) but this fic wasn't calling to me for a while... but it had its little rest and we're ready to get going again.
> 
> The vest in this chapter was inspired by this lovely artwork from [ eccentric_artist_221b ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eccentric_artist_221b/pseuds/eccentric_artist_221b) inspired by this series. I look at it daily for inspiration, and Eloise knitted about three other garments before I found the knitted vest. The piece just makes me feel all the things... especially the tenderness between Will and his son. Hold on, Baby Tommy, this fic is coming for you!
> 
> Historical note:
> 
> On the 12th March, 1918, King George V and Queen Mary did indeed visit Reading, essentially because Reading contributed a ton of money in War Bonds one week, and rewarded for their patriotism with a Royal Visit. 
> 
> The King and Queen visited the biscuit factory mentioned in a previous chapter, and then did award medals to Reading soldiers at the Reading War Hospital, including 2 Distinguished Conduct Medals, and a few Military Medals garnered by men at the Somme. 
> 
> Since Will suggests that he gave his actual medal away in canon, that's what I'm going with, but in actual practice he might not have been awarded it until much later. Whether he would have been awarded a DCM or a bar for his MM for that run is also up in the air, but I'm going with the DCM... because reasons.


	9. the night window, 1920

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bumping up the rating to **Mature** for brief, non-graphic depiction of sexual activity: skip paragraph beginning 'She leans in when he kisses her,' if that isn't your thing.
> 
> Chapter title from and musical depiction of what the author means by said paragraph: [The Night Window.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWxZeZW3bl0&ab_channel=ThomasNewman-Topic)

Eloise finds herself sitting in the hallway of the flat she grew up in, a half-finished blanket spilling out of her hands and over her lap. It is a small, simple thing, a plain stitch in a pastel yellow, now that she has finally used up all her olive yarn and wants something brighter.

She isn’t making it for anyone in particular, just a practice in something she’s never done before, though easy enough to be made by feel alone in the darkness as she watches guard over Edith and Ginnie, sleeping in one of the rooms above the pub.

It has been two weeks since their family has given up the little redbrick they rent and moved into the flat above the Lady of the Lake. Her parents are still living here for now, whilst they find a smaller house with less stairs to settle in for the rest of their lives—she and Will had offered to recommend them to their landlady, but Mother waved her off, saying that they needed to downsize, not take on a larger house than they had before. 

So for now, her parents sleep in the room that has always been theirs, Edith and Ginnie share Millie’s old room, and Will and Eloise sleep on a blanket on the floor of the bedroom she grew up in. It is more than uncomfortable, but Ginnie has taken Eloise’s old bed. Whilst they could buy another one and put it into the smaller bedroom, the fact remains that Will is taller than average for his generation at six feet tall, and trying to cram a grown husband and wife into a bed made for one would only end in disaster.

Mother finds her after a while. “Are you ever going to retire to your room before the pub closes?” she asks, almost pityingly. “It doesn’t do for a woman to sit here in the dark.”

Eloise sighs, setting down her knitting. Sitting in that bare room with only a desk and a blanket for company gets mind-numbing, after a while, and Edith and Ginnie might be woken by the rowdiness of the pub below them. She sits outside their bedroom in case they are in need of comfort. 

Mother counters that she was always fine, as a girl. Eloise replies that going from nights of quiet to the rowdiness that even gets on Eloise’s nerves now that she’s been away from it for so long and living in it for so long that you just get used to it are two very different things and Mother concedes the point.

“But you cannot simply keep sitting here like a beggar who can’t afford a candle,” she declares. “I will keep an ear out for the girls, and you can go make yourself useful down at the pub.”

Eloise looks up, ready to protest, but Mother shakes her head. “Just for an hour or so. You know your father has been taking it a bit lighter, this week, in preparation for you both taking the evenings on your own. I’m sure your William would appreciate the help, as early as this.”

Eloise narrows her eyes. She nearly retorts that her mother has never been so kind or helpful to her husband in the ten or so years she has known him, and is surprised that she does, that it takes catching herself at the last minute not to do so. Has she been away so long, been the woman of her own house for so long that she would dare talk back to her own mother?

Instead, she concedes, because the truth is that some part of that old, busy place that smells like sweat and spit and alcohol has always been home to her, and she does not know the next time she will be able to see it late at night without worrying about leaving her girls alone. So she stands up, straightens out her knitting before putting it on the table in her bedroom, and then takes the stairs down to her pub.

Father is in the back room, looking over some books. He looks up when he hears Eloise shut the door behind her, and then smiles.

“Hello,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

“Mother told me to stop moping and send me down to show my husband some support,” she replies. “I suppose it’s only correct to present a loving united front for our wedding anniversary.”

“Ah, you still celebrate those things,” says Father. “I think your mother and I stopped at about thirteen. Are you doing anything?”

Eloise doesn’t know. Through some unspoken arrangement, they alternate years, and it’s Will’s year to be doing something. Eloise is positively certain that Will has forgotten about it again. She does not say this to her father, however, just passing it off with some placatory remark that she’s sure he’ll spring something on her when they’re in their bedroom tonight, and Father seems satisfied.

He changes the topic. “Would you help me clean out the beer lines tomorrow morning?”

Eloise almost scowls—she remembers being roped into doing so as a child, going down into that cold, darkened cellar to make sure the taste of their ale was as fresh as it could be for the patrons by pouring strong chemicals down the lines and leaving it there for an hour. But she is a grown woman now, not a child, and so she agrees.

Then she tilts her head. “Couldn’t Will help you? No, it’s not that I’m unhappy to do it, it’s just that two men might make quicker work.”

Father he takes off his glasses, and sets them down on the book he is perusing. “That’s—I wanted to talk to you about that.”

Eloise straightens up, wary. Her usually jovial and hearty father rarely gets as serious as this. “What is it?”

“The first time I asked William to clean the beer lines on his own, he didn’t return from the cellar for three quarters of an hour.” He takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t take that long to pour chemicals down the lines, so I went to see what was holding him up, and—I found him. Just standing there, as if he didn’t know where he was.”

Eloise’s heart sinks, because this is nothing new to her and hasn’t been for the last three years. “I see.”

“And when I went closer to see if he was all right, and—well, he lashed out at me, all of a sudden. Bruised me around the cheek, no less.”

Eloise swallows, hard. “I see.”

“Your mother wanted me to fire William immediately, but then he’d be left with no job and you’d be left in hard times again. And you’re our daughter. I only want the best for you, Eloise. Which is why I’m telling you this.” He pauses. “Eloise, if he has  _ ever  _ done that to you—”

“He hasn’t, Papa,” she says, and it is the truth. Will has never laid a hand on her in all the time she has known him, and she calls that a mercy. Though she tries not to listen to idle gossip, she cannot help but hear about women suffering blows at the hands of their menfolk returned from battle. She hopes she will never have reason to feel that firsthand.

But even if she does not know that pain, the story her father tells her is one she knows all too well, and so she cannot smile and call it a one off. She purses her lips into a hard line and hopes that he will drop the subject.

He does not. “Eloise. I know these are your affairs, but I want you to remember that you were our daughter before you were a wife. Your mother and I will have a place for you and the girls to come—if William turns his anger to you.”

“It isn’t anger,” Eloise cuts in, because she cannot say nothing and she cannot stand hearing Will’s character being thought of like that. “He wasn’t angry. He was scared.”

The words drip from her lips, slowly, and they taste salty as they do. She does not want to admit that her husband is not the same as he was when she married him. As much as she knows she shouldn’t be thinking about it, some small buried part of her still hopes she’ll wake up one morning and everything will be the way it was before, even though she knows it is impossible.

Father does not respond, and Eloise cannot handle this awkward silence, despite the din of the pub just beyond a closed door, so she takes a breath, deep enough to allow her to go on. “I don’t know what he went through. But sometimes I believe he thinks he is there again. Something in the cellar must have made him feel afraid, and when that happens—he shuts down, almost. But when you came close—he may have taken you for a threat.”

Father draws back as if she has made an attempt on his person, and he would be right to do son. Charles Farr, rotund and jovial, is only remotely scary when patrons are having a brawl in his pub and he needs to throw them out before they damage his furniture. 

“You never said anything about this,” he says, his voice quiet, the calm of a man who could blow any moment.

“I didn’t,” she says. “Because you might take it as a fault of his manhood.”

“Isn’t that what this is?” he replies. “Isn’t that the mark of a man who’s lost his mind? There wasn’t anything down there, just the barrels and bottles. What is there to be afraid of?”

Eloise shakes her head. “I’m not sure. There seems to be no real rhyme or reason to the things that—that set him off like that.” She has puzzled out some of them—when Will hides under the table during a storm, it is because once those cracks were shells falling on his head—but he has an issue with milk that she does not understand and likely never will. 

Father parses this for a moment, drumming his fingers against the table as he thinks. The rhythmic beat seems as loud as Eloise’s own heart, thundering in her ears as she waits for whatever will come next.

“Then is it such a good idea to start going home in the evenings?” Father asks. “What happens if something sets him off like that in the middle of a shift, and no one is there to take the place of the boy? The effect on business could be catastrophic.”

Eloise steps a little closer, placing a hand on the table. “It could happen,” she says, because she knows better than to say that it will not. “But I don’t know if this is something that will simply go away with time. I can’t say that you can just wait this out, because I’ve been holding on for the last three years. All you can do is take a chance.”

Father seems unswayed.

“If you patronise him, you’ll make him feel worse,” she adds. “I have made that mistake already.” She has made more mistakes than her father will ever know, and it is because she has made all those mistakes that she knows how to fiddle her way through, now. “You don’t have to give up the whole evening shift at once, Papa. Take the last hour off, at first. It will be late enough that the girls will be in bed and I can be there to help, if you feel so wary about leaving William on his own.”

Father considers this for another slow, agonising minute, then acquiesces. “You always were the brains, weren’t you?” he says, smiling fondly. “Do you trust him?”

“I trust him enough to let him try to prove himself to you,” Eloise replies, standing up straight. She wonders when she went from defending the family she had at birth to the one she has made. “That’s all I ask.”

Father hums. “How could I say no to that?” he says, and Eloise breathes a sigh of relief. She thanks him, then says that she’s going to check on the pub for a moment, to prove that she and Will were perfectly able to handle the very end of the pub shift, and after glancing up to the ceiling above them to make sure there are no sounds of trouble from the flat upstairs, she does just that.

She slips through the door into the darkened pub, lit only by the slowly flickering gas lamps attached to the walls. Patrons with swinging limbs, heavy with drink, and the smell on their breaths that seeps into every crack of the place, the one that Will washes out every morning before the girls have woken up. The picture is all too familiar to her, and she cannot decide whether her racing heart is due to an instinct to bolt back to the safety of the flat upstairs or an old longing for a place she once knew.

She settles up behind the bar, and even though the pub is cool at this time of night, she feels the familiar warmth of the man already standing there, who smiles a little as he casts a watchful eye over the place.

“When was the last time you were down here this late?” he asks, without turning his head.

“Just before we were married,” she replies. “Said an old goodbye to the place before I went.” She pauses. “Never thought I’d be back, I’ll tell you that.”

Will hums, then calls last orders. Eloise is surprised he has done such a thing; Will is not one to speak unnecessarily, and there is a perfectly good last call bell fixed to the wall, until she looks over and finds it is not there.

She does not have the time to ponder this, because a man Eloise has never seen before sidles up to the bar. “One last pint of ale, served by a pretty young lady,” he drawls, and Eloise clicks her tongue as she pumps him a glass. “Never seen you before.”

“I’m not one of the usual staff,” she says, pushing it across the counter.

He raises the glass in her direction. “Let’s hope that you become a permanent fixture. I’d come for a pint every night if it were you pulling.”

Despite herself, Eloise laughs. “You coming every night would be good for business, so I won’t discourage you from doing so.”

“And where might I find you outside of business?” he says, his voice laced with a carnal desire that a man like him wouldn’t hide when he was sober, let alone when plied with alcohol. “What would a lady like you do for pleasure?”

“I’m already spoken for, and tonight marks eight years wed,” Eloise replies. “And I might add that my father is just behind that door and could throw you out of this pub for life, and my husband—who nearly suffered such a fate ten years ago—is the man who has been serving you all night. So it’d be in your best interest not to pursue that train of thought further.”

The man looks back and forth between her and Will, before his mouth drops open. He does not speak again, just sidles to the back wall to nurse his pint.

Will and Eloise share a smile as they watch him go. “I can’t tell whether I’m more proud of you for such a statement or disappointed that we might have lost business because you scared the man off,” he says, and Eloise laughs as he considers it. “Proud, I think. Though I could have done without the reminder of how this could have easily gone so wrong.”

“Weren’t you the one who once said that it didn’t matter how it could have gone differently?  _ What matters is I wake up in the morning and wonder which new way I can love you,”  _ she quotes, words long burned into her brain slipping between her lips.

Will turns to her then, eyes wide, the whites just visible in the dim light. “You remember that?” Eloise recites a little more of it for good measure. Will’s face melts, and her heart lifts and settles itself amongst the clouds. The mere fact that he is still here with her and still seems to love her the same as he did when they were married is gift enough. 

They play this easily, leaning back against the bar and watching over the pub as the last few patrons finally decide to call it a night and return home to their beds. Will locks the door once the last one is gone, pulling down the blinds and cutting them off from the outside world.

He returns back to the bar, key in hand. “Would you mind terribly if I kept you down here for a few minutes longer?” he asks, his hand mere inches away from the door to the back room. Eloise shakes her head, and Will returns a few moments later carrying a screwdriver. 

Father follows close behind him, a large bell designed to hang on the back wall clutched in his hands, which he then sets down onto the bar and casts an eye over the stock. “Inventory due tomorrow morning, Schofield,” he says, and Will hums in agreement before turning back to Eloise.

“Hold this up whilst I screw?” Will would not have to ask, rather frankly, and so she takes up the bell and holds it to the wall as Will fixes it there.

In the corner of her eye, she sees her father watching them as he wipes a table with a wet rag. He takes in every movement, from Eloise telling Will that he needs to unscrew and shift the placement of the bell a little because  _ that isn’t straight, and if it isn’t there’s no point in the whole thing, Will.  _ Four attempts at hanging it straight and failing later, they finally figure out that the original drilled holes weren’t in a straight line to begin with and have to concede with a slightly crooked bell until Will can find the hand drill he has stashed away in a box somewhere.

When they are finished, Father hums. “Are you coming back upstairs?” he asks. Eloise does not know what he is thinking, and does not know how such a thought develops when both Schofields surprise themselves by deciding they’ll stay down for a little while longer. But he does not say anything further, and Eloise can ignore whatever discussion she will have with him in the morning for at least another fifteen minutes. Father casts one last unreadable glance at them, before he trudges up the stairs to the flat and shuts the door behind him.

And then, once again, it is just Will and Eloise.

They pour a glass of water each and sip at it whilst taking seats on neighbouring stools. For a moment, there is silence. She had prepared a dozen ways to start the conversation about the things her father has told her, and all of them seem inadequate.

Eventually, Will picks up the slack, tipping his head back after he takes a sip of water. He seems looser, now; Eloise had not realised how tense he was earlier, a rope pulled to within an inch of breaking, until the pressure was off. “The last time we were here after closing time, we were betrothed by midnight.”

“And now look at us,” she says. “Look at where we are. Arguing like an old married couple over the placement of the last call bell.” It coaxes the smallest of laughs out of him, and Eloise smiles because such a thing is far too rare, these days. “I never got to ring it for last orders, actually. I always wanted to.”

“You want to do it tomorrow?”

Eloise considers this for a moment, then shakes her head. “When the girls are older, maybe. It’ll be something to wait for.” She stares at the bell. It glints in the dim light, and it is not the one that hung on the wall for every day of Eloise’s childhood. She pushes herself off the stool and makes her way to it, swinging the clapper until it rings out around the empty pub, deeper and more sonorous. “What happened to the old one?” she asks.

Will shrugs, muttering something about someone or other having an altercation with the bell after one too many pints of beer, a screw giving way, and the whole thing ending up on the floor with such a crack in the metal that her father thought it easier to replace it. 

“Do you think we’ll be all right?” she asks, and gets no answer. “Running the pub by ourselves, that is.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yes, of course.”

He starts to say something else and does not finish it. “Do you?”

“Between the two of us, we should manage.” She laughs to herself, because she does not have the Dutch courage brought on by something stronger than the glass of water in front of her. “Whether or not my father will relinquish control as planned is another question.”

“To be expected. After the way we started, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle if he ever trusts me fully as his son-in-law.”

“Give it time.”

“It’s been eight years.”

“And we’re still here, aren’t we?” she says. “We’ll be alright. We will.” It is both faith and fantasy, and she doesn't know if it will come to hurt her more in time. “You love me right now, don’t you?”

Yes, comes the answer, though it doesn’t come in so many words. Instead, Will rests his hand on her shoulder, then slides it up to cup her face, and Eloise does not pull away because the last time they were close like this was some while ago, and she misses it, and in all truth it is as if she has something to prove to her father.

She leans in when he kisses her, and she nods when he asks for more, and she enjoys it when they sway around the pub in a sort of intimate dance that begins with her back pressed against the window that opens onto the snug—thankfully closed—and ends with both of them on the floor of the backroom, less clothed and out of breath. A thrill runs through her as she lies there, the hairs on her neck standing on end both with the chill of the night and the rush of something she would not have dared to do when she was younger.

If they were young, if they were just twenty, they might spend all night down there, lying between the desk and the door to the cellar that wouldn’t be given a second thought. But they are grown, and they have two young daughters sleeping above them, so they dress into some semblance of what they were wearing earlier and stumble back up the stairs, hoping that they have not been heard. 

They are not so lucky.

The master bedroom, the one they must pass to get to the one they sleep in now, glows softly with dim candle light, and beside it is Father, reading some book that looks older than she is.

“If there is anything untoward in my pub as a result of what you two have done tonight,” he says, in a low voice, “you’re both spending the morning fixing it.”

Eloise wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And 40 weeks later... a baby. 
> 
> Thanks for bearing with me, folks; life happened, and will continue to now that school's about to start up again (passed all my exams from last year though, woo!) and then lots of writing for stuff that was mostly not this fic (turns out, running a creative writing workshop makes you analyse all your previous work and then sometimes it kicks you into writer's block, haha.) I do still have a fondness for this and I hope to finish it one way or another.
> 
> In other news, I finally made the trench cake Eloise made for Will in 1916! I can confirm: it is good. It's sweet enough that I don't want more than one piece, but it's not overly rich. Link to the recipe again [here!](https://thepastisaforeignpantry.com/2020/02/12/trench-cake-1914)


	10. holding on and letting go, 1921

Eloise’s son cries a lot more for her than her daughters ever did.

Not that the latter was a trivial thing, by any means. Babies cry, as babies are wont to do when they need something, and in the absence of her father, Ginnie was especially known for screaming her lungs out when she needed something.

Tommy is similar to his sister, and yet different all the same. He screams with less ferocity, but more often, and for longer. He wakes his parents up more often in the night, and whilst Will is usually awake when he does, Eloise draws herself out of bed each time and goes to comfort her youngest child.

She does so again now, not because it is the middle of the night, but because Will has run out on afternoon errands whilst she rests at home, and has taken the girls with him. It is not the first time that they have done this since Tommy was born, but it still rattles her; being left alone with her baby whilst she waits for her family to return.

She does not get the chance to stew on the matter, though, because Tommy wails a little louder, and she crosses over to the crib and picks up her son. “It’s all right, baby. Mummy’s here,” she says, rocking him a little in her arms. When he does not settle, she unbuttons her blouse and lets him nurse. He does so with great gusto; he was a large baby, having spent longer than usual in her tummy, and he matches it with an equally great appetite, feeding as often as his sisters once did, but for twice as long. Eloise quips that he’ll drain her entire breast of milk this rate, a comment that does not deter Tommy in the slightest.

“It’s okay though, baby,” she says. “You have all you like. Mummy’ll make more for you.” Tommy takes this for granted, and shuts his eyes as he has his fill. She hums a soft lullaby without stopping to think about it, the same one she hummed to his older sisters. The world has changed since they were babes, and yet this little moment of constancy still calms her soul.

Tommy finishes nursing, but he does not fall back asleep as he usually does. He does not fuss, either, though Eloise raises him to her nose to check he hasn’t soiled his nappy, and breathes a small sigh of relief when it turns out he has not.

Instead, she stands, rocking him a little in her arms still. "How about taking a change of scenery with Mum, hmm?" Tommy makes no movement of opposition to that suggestion, so Eloise toes out of the master bedroom and into the one that was once hers.

The room is much the same as it was when she was a child. They had to move Eloise's old bed into the other room for Ginnie, but she sits down in the chair by the desk and remembers in her chest the wobble on one of the legs. She had once meant to ask Will to fix it for her and never gotten around to it. Perhaps she will have to ask him how to do it herself, because Tommy will sit at this desk someday and she does not want him distracted from his homework because he is too occupied by rocking back and forth on his chair.

For now, though, she does just that, lilting back and forth as she murmurs to her son. "This was Mummy's room, Tommy. Mum slept here from the moment she left the cradle to the day she married your Papa, nine years ago."

Her voice catches on the end of the sentence. Another year. She did not forget, but she also has been cooped up in her own house for most of the last three months on account of recovering from having a child, and has not had the time to do anything.

It is not the first time she has dealt with her wedding anniversary after delivering a baby, but it is the first time that she has had to spend recovering significantly after doing it. She should have expected it, with Edith being on time and Ginnie being two weeks early, that Tommy would take his time to appear and cause trouble for her in the process. "Since you're the cause, can I just wrap you up in brown paper and call you the gift?"

Tommy replies to this prospect by blinking slowly at her, and Eloise laughs softly to herself before casting another eye over the room again, then picks up the sheet she left on the desk a few days ago.

"No, Mama and Papa have a gift for you this year, I think. You still like these colours?" she says, holding the sample of wall paint colours close, and watching as his eyes drink in the different hues. "I told your father to get whichever one looked nicest in the shop, so we'll see what he picks." She scans over the colours herself, then; all of them nice enough that she will not grouse no matter which one Will brings home. 

Perhaps it is a little early to be painting Tommy's room when he is only two months old and will not sleep in it for a good while, but the girls have gotten tired of their deep blue walls. They have set their sights on a somewhat bold wallpaper, set with large pink flowers, and will not be talked out of it, and Will thought that it was only fair to paint Tommy's room at the same time. The girls, unable to resist the fine allure of paint even if it was not for their own bedroom, quickly swept away Eloise's protests that she would not be able to help because the paint fumes aren't good for the baby. She can only hope that Will is enough to keep their hands in check; Eloise has seen some of the artistic efforts made by her daughters. They aren't always particularly neat, but they are certainly  _ energetic. _

An energy that carries through as the pub door slams open. Eloise jolts in her seat as Ginnie's sharp announcement that they're home carries all the way from downstairs, quickly followed by the swift patter of feet as she runs up to greet her mother. Ginnie finds her easily, given that Tommy has started wailing again after being knocked about, and runs right up to say hello to her brother, whose tears seem to pass as quickly as they came.

Eloise smiles. "A little quieter, darling," she says. "Sometimes a sudden noise might scare your brother." Ginnie considers this for a moment, screwing up her face in concentration, before nodding vigorously as she smiles again, before darting out of the room when Will requests help with the groceries from out in the hallway. There's a shuffle in the kitchen, the girls nattering away incessantly about something or other - Eloise does not know how they never seem to run out of energy - before both father and daughters return to the bedroom, and the family is all together again.

"Hello, hello," says Eloise. Tommy gurgles in her arms at the arrival. "And that's a hello from the young one, too. I think he wants to see what paint you brought him."

Both Ginnie and Edith have their hands clasped around the handle of a paint can, though they strain under the weight. Eventually, both are forced to set down the cans, and Eloise sees the name of the colour. She compares it to the sheet she has on the desk; a light shade of blue that reminds her of a clean, open sky, unmarred by clouds. "That's a sweet choice."

"It was not one that was made easily," says Will, moving the paint cans into a corner. "Ginnie made a strong argument for that deep red, but I think the blue seems calmer. More soothing. That's what a child needs, isn't it?"

Eloise sincerely hopes so. They could use a little bit of peace and calm, as much of it as they can get. She can only hope that Tommy will never know anything like what the rest of his family has lived first hand.

"Can we do it  _ now,  _ Papa?" asks Ginnie, darting over to the cans and trying to figure out how to open one of them.

"Not this instant, Ginnie," says Will. "We'd need to move the furniture, first, and it'd take longer than the few hours we have before the pub has to open for the evening. And if we did, that'd mean that we'd miss dinner ourselves, and I know your tummy wouldn't be happy with that." Ginnie does not protest, because it is true. Instead, the girls quickly duck out of the room and into their own bedroom, where they will occupy themselves until they are called to eat.

Will does not go with them immediately; instead, he crosses the few steps over to the desk and looks down. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Tommy wouldn't settle. I thought that moving might help the both of us, and he seemed to agree, didn't you?" she says, looking down to find that Tommy has in fact gone back to sleep, leaning against her chest as if it were the safest place in the world. "I'm glad he's comfortable here, in any case. I'm glad it feels like a home."

The words come out more quietly that she expects, her throat catching midway. She does not understand it at first, but when the catch turns into a lump, then turns into water at the corner of her eyes that she blinks away before they can fall, she grits her teeth and searches for an answer.

She is surprised when she finds it, the words falling from her mouth the moment she does. "It's going to be his room now, not mine anymore." 

Will does not say anything. Eloise doesn't expect him to understand; she knows he never had much thought of his bare childhood bedroom. She isn't sure that he quite thinks of the pub as home yet, either, not even when they were sleeping on the floor in this very room. But the room has always been hers, and she doesn't know how to feel about the fact that soon it will not, that these four walls will no longer be the deep copper they have been since she was born. It's silly, when she looks down at her son and knows he needs the space far more than she needs memory, but she cannot get rid of the lump in her throat. 

Will clears his throat. "Is there anything in the room you could keep? A part of the old world?"

Eloise looks around again, but there is nothing. There are only two pieces of her old furniture here now, a wardrobe and a desk, and both are empty. When she was young, she used to keep all sorts in here; she poured soil into old beer bottles, put stones on the windowsill, pressed flowers between pages of old books or sheets of newspaper, all until her room was full to the bursting. It was one of the things she had to deal with when she and Will were first married, in fact. She shed most of her childhood things, returning stones and soil to whence they came, but once she had a house of her own she filled it up to make a home, and it was something her husband was not used to.

But it has been nine years since then, and there has been time to learn how to meet halfway, so Will steps onto the bridge now. Eloise is unsure of what he is playing at when he leaves the room only to return with both a screwdriver and a small box in his hands. She is even more confused when he crosses the room and scrapes a few chips of paint from the far wall. 

"Will - Will, what?" she sputters at the sight, a formerly solid and good wall now marred by a few holes cut out of the pain, exposing the white plaster underneath.

Will turns to her, face unmoved as if what he has done is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. "Now you have something to remember your old room by."

Eloise sputters some more. "You just took off part of the  _ wall,"  _ she repeats, still not quite believing what she has just seen.

Will only nods. "It's going to be painted over soon enough anyway. Might need to add a little more to cover the gaps, but it shouldn't be too much trouble." 

She hums. It is an interesting solution to a problem she only half has, and she still does not know quite what to make of it when she peers into the box when Will sets it down on the desk. The chips are small, but the copper paint still seems to gleam in the afternoon light as if it were something dug from the earth itself, and Eloise smiles. She would not have thought of it herself, but now that it is done she does not want to undo it. 

"Thank you," she says, finally. "Thank you for this."

Will does not reply. He does not need to. It is enough that he is here, that they are both here to see this step forward into the new day, whilst retaining a shred of the old. The notion fills her with both thanks and melancholy, but the thanks comes greater. She has clasped her hands together and whispered prayers in shadow and sacred hall alike, waiting for this step into the new age, and it has come to her as the bundle in her arms and all that he brings with him. A door opens before her as the old world closes behind, and she takes a fragile step towards it, feet hesitant but firm as they hit solid ground.

She looks down at Tommy, fast asleep and blissfully unaware of what he has just inspired, then up at Will, who will have to walk this weary road with her, wherever it may lead. She would not want to do it with anyone else.

Eloise stands and looks Will in the eye, as she has done so many times before. She takes a deep breath, right from the pit of her chest, stirring a pebble ache for a time long gone that she has not truly noticed until now. She holds it there until the rock crumbles into sand. As she exhales again, she lets go, returning it to the earth where it belongs, where it might support the growth of something greater still.

_ And so we go on,  _ Eloise thinks, as she follows Will out of the room and leaves the door open behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are reading in time, thank you for waiting the... uh, five months it took me to write this. I hope you're all well. Life... happens, but in the midst of all that life sometimes we get the spark to carry on with a fic. I thought it was apt to release it exactly a year to the day I stumbled on 'you'd make a mess' in the Dunkirk tag, and learned of Will and Eloise for the first time.
> 
> This fic finally has a link with the other fandom it's supposed to bridge! Welcome to anyone who might be discovering this from the Dunkirk tags (I don't know if there are any of you, but if there are, hello, hello!)
> 
> Historical tangent for this chapter: paint colours in the Victorian era, if not creams or off-whites, were generally deep and dark like Eloise's deep copper (in my mind, it's [this colour.](https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details/copper-blush) \- mostly to hide the appearance soot from a fireplace! This changed in the Edwardian period, when interior paint colours took on a more pastel palette - whilst they are repainting in 1921, when paint trends were probably shifting again, I thought a nice [pastel blue](https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details/first-dawn) would do well for Tommy.  
> (Will's childhood bedroom is [this ironically named off-white shade,](https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details/milky-pail) because I can't resist.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I can be found at [@scientistsinistral](https://scientistsinistral.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, and pretty much across the internet.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you think!


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